


we've got crosses on our eyes

by ganymede_elegy



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, Angst, F/M, Jon Snow and the Starks Are Not Related, Jon becomes a hunter, Monsters, Ned Catelyn and Robb are dead, Supernatural - Freeform, but not a lot, but not really, minor jon/ygritte, none of those characters appear, some violence and gore, takes place in the supernatural universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-09-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:07:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 50,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25937161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ganymede_elegy/pseuds/ganymede_elegy
Summary: When he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.He dreams of the Stark estate, nestled deep in the Vermont countryside, he dreams of running through the halls with Robb, snowball fights with Arya and Bran, watching little Rickon teeter around on his tiny legs, helping Sansa gather flowers from the gardens. He dreams of playing hide and seek, running through the woods, breathless and joyous and free.He dreams of Ned's hand on his shoulder and Catelyn's warm hug.He dreams of coming home from school one day to the bodies of Ned and Cat on the floor of the kitchen and Robb's body by the back staircase. He dreams of hearing a small noise upstairs and finally finding the rest of them huddled in a closet on the second floor, Sansa with her arms around the others and fear in her eyes.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 626
Kudos: 772





	1. it's so cold in this house

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is not to be mistaken with my *other* ghost story. Not the same universe. I just really like ghosts, ok?
> 
> (also, you need no actual knowledge of the show Supernatural, I'm pretty much going to be following my own rules anyway)

When he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

He dreams of the Stark estate, nestled deep in the Vermont countryside, he dreams of running through the halls with Robb, snowball fights with Arya and Bran, watching little Rickon teeter around on his tiny legs, helping Sansa gather flowers from the gardens. He dreams of playing hide and seek, running through the woods, breathless and joyous and free.

He dreams of Ned's hand on his shoulder and Catelyn's warm hug.

He dreams of coming home from school one day, after he'd gotten detention for cursing and had to stay late. He dreams of walking in the front door to silence, then into the kitchen to the bodies of Ned and Cat on the floor, blood pooling around them. He dreams of yelling and running through the house and finding Robb's body near the back stairs. He dreams of the terror he'd felt. He dreams of the way he'd vomited on the floor in the hall. He dreams of hearing a small noise upstairs and finally finding the rest of them huddled in a closet on the second floor, Sansa with her arms around the others and fear in her eyes.

* * *

There'd been a rush of police and medics and reporters.

All of them are underage. Jon's mom had died when he was only three and her best friend, Jon's godfather, Ned Stark had taken him in. The Starks had raised him like one of their own. Robb had been his _brother._

The other four Stark children are miraculously alive and unharmed. Jon isn't able to talk to them very much in all the rush, but he pieces together what happened. All of them had been upstairs when they'd heard screams and Robb, as the oldest, had grabbed his baseball bat and gone down to investigate. He'd been fourteen. Big tough hero.

It's Sansa that tells him, through tears, that she'd heard Robb shouting and then a gurgling noise and then nothing and she'd known something was wrong. She'd looked downstairs and seen Robb's body at the bottom and something moving off to the side. She'd had to pull Arya into the closet and keep a hand over her mouth to stop her from shouting or going down. Bran had pulled Rickon in and they'd prayed that Rickon would keep silent. He was only five.

At the station, a man comes and talks to them. Old and gruff, like a grizzly bear. He says he's with the FBI and he asks Jon a lot of questions that Jon thinks are odd. The man asks Sansa and the others questions, but he focuses on Sansa.

What did she see moving downstairs? What noises did she hear?

She repeats her story and when she gets to a detail, he stops her.

"Cold?" the FBI agent says. "Like what kind of cold?"

The question strikes Jon as strange. Sansa had mentioned feeling cold to the police, who hadn't even blinked at it. It had been an unusually cold winter, even for Vermont.

"Well," Sansa says, voice shaking, "there was frost on the banister." She hadn't told the police that, Jon guesses because they hadn't asked. "It was so cold. Like I was outside for hours but I wasn't."

The FBI agent frowns and writes this down and asks if she'd seen anything specific about what was moving around in the living room. _What,_ Jon notes, not _who._

When the man leaves, Sansa's face is so pale he can see her veins through her skin and her eyes are almost as red as her hair. She's twelve years old.

* * *

Jon hesitates for only a little before running after the FBI agent. He's able to slip away from the police easily. Jon's always been sneaky. Quick and fast. He'd always been the best at hide and seek (Arya might have been, but she would get impatient and make mistakes. Jon was patient).

"What does the cold mean," he says to the FBI agent's back as the man walks across the parking lot. His voice echoes in the dark, bounces off the patrol cars around them, and the man pauses.

"Go back inside," the man says without turning around. "Be a good little boy and go back inside."

He's not a little boy. He's fourteen and he'd just found the bodies of three of the people he cares about most, ripped apart in his home.

"What does the cold mean," he says again, louder, and the man sighs.

"Keep your voice down, kid."

"I'm not a kid."

The FBI agent laughs at that, but not meanly. He sounds tired.

"What it means is that you shouldn't worry about it. Go back inside. Your brothers and sisters need you." The man gets into a beat up old Ford pickup and drives away and something in Jon's brain doesn't sit right because an FBI agent would not be driving that.

* * *

Despite what the FBI agent had said, the Starks _aren't_ his brothers and sisters, not really, and that is made perfectly clear over the next few weeks. Their Aunt Lysa agrees to take them in, but she won't take Jon. He's not blood.

Arya, Bran, and Rickon cry and Sansa begs and pleads to no avail. The Starks are taken away to Boston and Jon is thrown into foster care.

He's angry all the time and he goes to the police station after school every day and asks if they have any updates. The officers always kick him out and one day, Jon decides that if they're not going to help him, he'll help himself. When the officers aren't looking, he sneaks past them all and into their records room.

He's always been sneaky.

The police _do_ catch him, though. He's still just a fourteen year old kid in a building full of police and they find him quick enough.

He's sitting in an interrogation room with a social worker that looks like she'd rather be anywhere else when the FBI agent walks in.

"Let's go," he says to Jon and hands some papers to the social worker.

Jon isn't sure what happens, but the man, who introduces himself as Jeor Mormont, takes him out of the station and puts him in the Ford pickup and takes him to McDonalds.

* * *

Jeor Mormont isn't an FBI agent at all, he tells Jon in a ratty motel in the next town over, two hours after they'd left the police station. Jon is ravenously shoving a burger into his mouth. Mormont laughs and hands Jon the second bag. "I remember being your age, believe it or not," he says. "Couldn't ever eat enough."

Jon isn't sure what to make of this man who pretended to be an FBI agent. He should probably be scared, but he finds he doesn't really care and takes the second bag and eats three more burgers before he's full. When he's full, he eats the fries.

"So who are you," Jon asks finally.

"I'm a hunter.”

Jon frowns. A hunter. Who pretended to be an FBI agent. "What do you hunt?"

"Monsters." Mormont says. "Demons. Ghosts. Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters, skinwalkers, everything you've ever thought was hiding under your bed and told yourself wasn't there." He stares at Jon, waiting for a reaction.

"Oh," Jon says, and then, "what kind of monster makes things cold?"

There's a look that flashes through Mormont's eyes that Jon now looks back on and realizes was satisfaction.

"Not sure," he shrugs. "But if you want, you can come with me and maybe we'll figure it out. No promises, though. You come with me, you train with me, and I help you look for what killed your parents and your brother. But you have to understand there are no guarantees in this business."

Jon agrees.

* * *

He spends years training under Mormont.

He learns how to use a gun, a knife, a sword, an axe. Shotguns, bow and arrows, snares and lures and demon traps. He learns lore and history and basic Latin. He learns how to forge IDs and credit cards and lie without getting caught. He's always been good at sneaking and he gets even better. He works out and buffs up.

  
He learns how to drive on the dirt roads in rural Montana. Mormont's property is riddled with old cars and Jon takes them out for joyrides, speeding so fast that he almost loses control, doing donuts in the dirt.

When Jon is fifteen, he goes with Mormont to Nebraska where they find a kid in the same situation Jon had been in. Family killed. No relatives to take him in. Alone.

Smart.

Very smart. Jon can tell just from when Mormont questions him, and Mormont can tell, too. The boy asks just the right questions back, and suddenly Mormont is bringing him to Montana.

"Like I'm runnin' a fuckin' daycare," Mormont grumbles and Jon rolls his eyes and turns to the boy in the back seat.

"Don't listen to him, he's always this grumpy, it don't mean anything."

The boy in the back looks pale, but nods.

That's how Sam Tarly joins their pack.

* * *

Sam isn't the best at weapons and fighting. He's terrible, actually. Jon gets the sense he's a pacifist by nature, but that doesn't mean he's useless.

He's the smartest person Jon's ever met and he remembers everything he reads. He becomes a walking encyclopedia. He learns basic witchcraft. He learns dead languages and reads ancient texts. He tracks news reports and police scanners and finds patterns.

He gets Mormont hooked up to the internet, much to Mormont's dismay, and learns how to hack into police archives and databases. One time he even hacks the FBI. He takes over their ID and credit card forgery and he's much better at it.

Eventually, Sam and Jon become a well oiled machine. Sam is the brains and Jon is the brawn and they are efficient. Mormont frowns and mutters under his breath about this not being traditional hunting, but both Jon and Sam know he's proud of them.

* * *

Jon is sixteen years old when he kills his first monster.

So far it's just been him tagging along with Mormont, not really allowed to participate. Mormont has him watch, or Jon's allowed to draw devil's traps or lay down salt or help with the minutiae.

But they encounter a pack of skinwalkers in New Jersey that's bigger than they'd been anticipating and Mormont is outnumbered. Jon watches a man change into a dog, bones shifting and cracking under his skin, hair sprouting, human teeth falling out and replaced with canine.

In the mess, he's knocked over and the jagged edge of a metal table nearly takes his eye out. One of the skinwalkers pins him down, snapping at his face, all sharp teeth and rotting breath and dripping saliva. Jon holds it away with one arm and brings the silver knife up to it's neck with the other. Hot blood pours onto him, splashing his face and neck and shirt.

It's his first kill and Mormont claps him on the back and doesn't say anything.

Back at the hotel, he showers and scrubs the blood off of his face and neck and hands, feeling the bile rise in his throat.

It had been a man. A human. A person.

A person with a family, probably. Someone that loved him, maybe.

In that moment it doesn't matter that the skinchanger ate human hearts and had killed dozens of innocent people.

When Mormont is asleep, Jon goes outside and hotwires the car and drives north for hours until he hits the suburbs of Boston. He ignores his phone that buzzes constantly, both Mormont and Sam. He turns it off when he remembers that Sam can track cellphones.

* * *

He's in the backyard of their house, in a copse of trees.

The house is huge, the backyard is huge, with a pool and a small wooded area at the back near the fenceline. Jon has a moment of anger, but pushes it away. He shouldn't envy them their nice life. He doesn't wish his on them.

He gets there in the early hours after midnight and none of the house lights are even on, but he stares at the windows anyway, looking for any movement. Looking for _them_.

He knows their address by heart. He's been having Sam keep an eye on them, just in case. He memorized this address years ago, never thinking he'd actually use it. But here he is.

_Just one look_ , he tells himself. He'll stay here until he sees one of them, and then he'll leave.

He doesn't remember falling asleep.

* * *

"Jon," he hears a voice whisper, low and urgent. "Jon, wake up."

He opens his eyes to a pair of bright blue eyes and soft, shining copper hair. Light filters through a canopy of trees and he's on the cold ground and he feels like he's been hit by a truck.

He sits up and her hands come to brace him and he jerks away from her touch.

She looks over her shoulder towards the house. She's crouched down next to him, in a set of pale blue pajamas that looks softer than anything Jon's felt in years.

"What are you doing here," she whispers. "Rickon found you this morning and came in and you're lucky he found me and not Aunt Lysa or Petyr. He said dad was sleeping in the trees."

Jon doesn't know what to say to this. He knows he has Ned's coloring, it had been a joke in the family. Robb had looked like his mom and Jon had looked like Ned and they'd joked that Jon really _was_ their brother. Jon remembers asking Ned once, when he was very young, and Ned had shaken his head no. Lyanna had moved down to South Carolina after high school, gotten knocked up, and came running back to Vermont a few years later. Ned didn't know who Jon's dad was, but it wasn't him. He had smiled sadly and mentioned that the Snows and the Starks were distantly related, some type of cousins a bunch of times removed. Some common ancestor come over from the old country that might account for the similarity.

Jon stands up, and Sansa stands up, too.

"You shouldn't go investigating men sleeping in your backyard on your own," Jon tells her with a frown. Sansa had always been just a little too naive, a little too immersed in her fairytales. He has a sudden, choking fear that some day Sansa will find herself in a dark alley with one of the monsters he now knows exists.

She frowns. "I thought he was joking, but he wouldn't let it go. What are you doing here? Where have you _been?_ "

He doesn't know how to answer that. He didn't plan for this. He'd just wanted to _see_ one of them again. It's been two years and so much has happened, Winterfell seems like another life. A dream. He had come here needing to make sure it wasn't.

"We tried asking where you were," she continues when he doesn't answer. "No one would tell us." She pauses and hesitates. "Arya ran away last summer and went back to Vermont and couldn't find you. She was missing for a week."

He feels guilt punch through him but he doesn't know how to respond to any of this.

"Montana," is all he says. "I got taken in by a guy from Montana."

" _Montana,_ " she breathes. "Then what are you doing here? What happened to your face?"

For a second he's confused until he remembers the ugly gash through his right eyebrow and the heavy bruise to his left cheekbone that had already begun to purple when he'd looked at himself in the mirror after his shower last night. He feels the bruise now that he remembers it, he can feel the tightness of his skin and he knows it's going to split at some point. There's also the claw marks on his shoulders where the skinchanger had held him down, but Sansa can't see that.

"You don't even have anything on it," she scolds, and her hand comes up and cool fingers grip his chin and turn his head so she can look at the cut better. "That's going to get infected."

  
He'd left the motel without really treating it. He hadn't been thinking.

She's frowning at him and he can't find anything to say. His brain is numb and spinning and all his training flies out the window and he can't think of even the most basic lie.

She sighs. "Wait here, I'll go get something for it."

He tries to stop her, but all he can say is "don't tell the others."

She pauses, nods, then continues back to the house.

He hopes she doesn't say anything. He hopes Rickon forgets. Seeing Sansa was bad enough, he doesn't think he can handle it if Bran or Rickon come outside. _Arya_.

His little shadow. Tiny, brave, argumentative Arya. She'd tried to find him and he hadn't been there. His heart aches.

He debates running away. Getting out of there before Sansa can come back. It would be the smart thing to do. There's a reason he hasn't come to see them before.

_They're a liability_ , Mormont's voice echoes in his head. _Something wants to get to you, they can go for the people you love. Keep those people to a minimum. In fact, try to not to love anyone at all._

But he doesn't run. He can't. He's rooted to the spot where he stands, surrounded by trees, just out of sight of the big house.

She's back soon enough, running across the grass and into the trees and Jon hopes no one's seen her. From the position of the sun, he can tell it's still early. Arya likes to sleep late, so does Bran. Jon doesn't know anything about her aunt or the man she mentioned, he assumes the aunt's boyfriend or husband.

She sits him down on a rock and squats down next to him and begins working on his face. She hands him a towel filled with ice and makes him hold it against his bruised cheekbone while she tends to the cut. She cleans it out with something that stings, making him wince, and she's careful to keep the liquid out of his eye. Then she dabs on some sort of cream and concentrates carefully as she layers a half dozen band-aids across the long gash.

"There," she says with a slight frown. "That's the best I can do with what we have, but I think you might need stitches?"

He turns to say something to her, but finds he can't. She's very close to him and she looks so concerned. She looks like _home._ He clenches his jaw tight and realizes, suddenly, that if he speaks he's going to start crying. He hasn't cried in years. He didn't cry when he found the bodies and he didn't cry at the funeral. He didn't cry when he broke his arm last year or any of the times Mormont knocked him to the ground in training.

"Jon what happened," she whispers and brings her hand up to his face again, tracing along the bruise on the other side. "Did the man from Montana do this?"

He shakes his head no and says "I can't explain. I can't tell you. I should go."

_"Go?"_ she asks, voice raising an octave and almost breaking out of her whisper. "You can't go, you just came back!"

He doesn't say anything to this and she just stares at him. After enough time passes, she sighs.

"Aunt Lysa and Petyr will be up soon, I need to go back inside. But once Petyr goes to work, I'll bring you out some breakfast, ok?"

He nods and she stares at him for a few more seconds until he says "ok. Yeah."

She goes back in and Jon doesn't stay.

He goes back to the car and at the last minute, grabs a piece of paper and writes down one of the burner phone numbers with the words _if you're ever in trouble_. He goes back and sticks it to a tree near the rock with an old knife they'd been meaning to get rid of anyway because it was too small for either of them.

Then he turns on his primary phone and calls Mormont.

* * *

Mormont is furious and threatens to kick Jon out, but he doesn't actually do it. He pretends to be angry about Jon stealing the car, but Jon knows he's angry because he went to go see the Starks.

Jon doesn't tell him about talking to Sansa, or Rickon finding him.

He keeps the Stark burner phone on and ignores the first call that comes through. It's too soon for Sansa to be in trouble, she's probably just angry. She doesn't leave a voicemail and then calls repeatedly for the next two hours. She never leaves a voicemail and the calls eventually stop.

* * *

He kills more monsters and hardens his heart.

They're on a job in Seattle when they manage to bust part of a human trafficking ring. Sam had gotten some red flags pinged on a warehouse on the outskirts of the city near the docks and when they'd checked it out, it turned out to not be anything supernatural at all; the monsters were strictly human.

The correct procedure is to alert the proper authorities because they don't deal with human criminals, but Jon loses his cool and reveals himself to the guards, which starts a fight and Mormont has no choice but to join in. They end up taking out the guards, Mormont cursing the whole time as they tie them up.

“We need to get out of here,” Mormont grunts. He's already made the call to his connection in the FBI and they'll be here soon. The guards are out and the kids will be safe, he says. Jon is loathe to leave them, but he knows they can't be caught here.

They're almost at the car when one of the kids follows them. He's maybe twelve, Jon thinks.

“Take me with you.” He's slim and dark and looks scared.

“No can do, kid,” Mormont says, opening the car door and throwing his kit in the back.

“I won't go back,” the boy's voice shakes but Jon can see the determination in his eyes.

“The cops are coming,” Jon tries to reassure, hand hesitating on his own door handle.

“I won't go with them,” the kid says, more resolute. “They'll send me back. I won't go back.”

Jon wants to know what the kid means, but he also _doesn't_ want to know. It must be bad if he's not happy to be rescued. Jon looks at Mormont over the hood of the truck.

“ _No_ ,” Mormont growls.

And so Satin Flowers joins their group.

* * *

Satin has a natural affinity for magic and his Latin is the best of all of them.

He learns witchcraft with an enthusiasm that makes Jon gag. Witchcraft is a nasty business, lots of bodily fluids and animal parts. Jon's got no taste for it, but he can't deny it's helpful. Witches can be wicked powerful, and Sam's basic knowledge only goes so far.

Satin doesn't talk about what he was running away from, but Jon gets the picture over time. Satin will say things about his mother, sometimes. About the things she would do to him, and what she'd let her friends do. Jon feels fiercely protective of small, quiet Satin. He feels the same way about Sam, somehow still kind and jovial in the face of what they do.

He realizes one day that he would die for them.

He'll kill for them.

* * *

He and Mormont stop at a hunter bar at the border of Wyoming and Montana on their way back home from Texas.

There's a young girl behind the bar with wild orange hair, she can't be much older than Jon. He would wonder why they're letting an underage girl serve drinks, but he's found that hunters have their own set of rules. He also finds out that her mom owns the place.

When Jon and Mormont sit at the bar, she makes eye contact with him and gives a smile that Jon will find out later is the smile she gives when she knows she's going to get her way.

Later in the night, on his way back from the bathroom, she pulls him into the back office and he loses his virginity on top of the desk, knocking papers to the floor and smashing a lamp that he promises to pay for, which makes her laugh.

* * *

He finds himself at Ygritte's bar more and more often. It's not too far from Mormont's property, two hours, less if he's speeding on the back roads. He stops there when he can and she gives him a different kind of training.

There's one night, they're naked in her bed and she tells him she wants to come along on a hunt.

She knows how to use a shotgun, he's watched her pull it on patrons who get a little too rowdy. Hell, he's even watched her knock a guy out cold one time when he'd gotten too handsy with her.

Mormont is opposed to the idea, he's opposed to the idea of Ygritte in general, but Ygritte isn't one to take no for an answer, so she comes along and she doesn't do too bad of a job. Her dad was a hunter, but he'd been killed when she was just a kid. Her mom had never let her hunt, but she says she's eighteen now, her mom can't tell her what to do.

Jon is fine with her coming along. She's older than him by nearly two years and she's the only girl he's ever had sex with (he is absolutely not her first and she reminds him of that a lot), so he's sort of happy that this is something he knows more about than her.

It's a fairly routine exorcism. The demon fights them but they're four on one and they get him into the devil's trap quickly and Satin reads the Latin incantation. When the demon has poured out of the man in the trap and he collapses onto the floor, Mormont checks the man's pulse and nods that he'll live. He and Satin gather their things to leave, but Ygritte holds Jon back and tells Mormont and Satin they'll meet them back at the hotel. Mormont doesn't look pleased but Jon tells him to go, so he does, grumbling.

Ygritte is high off the fight, Jon recognizes it. He's been there himself sometimes, when adrenaline and fear kick in _hard._ It happened to him on his first hunt, too. She pushes him to the floor and fucks him next to the unconscious body of the man who'd been possessed and any protests Jon might have had leave the minute her hands are down his pants.

* * *

Months after the Boston incident, he gets a call on the Stark line.

She leaves a voicemail this time.

_I just wanted to let you know I told Arya about you. I know I promised I wouldn't, but you promised to stay so I guess we're both liars._

There's a long pause and there's dread pooling in Jon's stomach.

_She wants to talk to you. Can you call this number and just talk to her? I caught her looking up Greyhound routes to Montana and I do not need her disappearing again. Just call her and tell her you're ok and tell her to not go to Montana. Call between four and six pm. We'll be home from school and Petyr won't be home yet._

She sighs.

_If you care at all about her, just call, ok?_

He shouldn't call.

* * *

He calls.

He waits until five thirty on a Tuesday. He'll give himself a half hour and that's it.

Sansa picks up the phone and says “Baelish residence.”

“It's me. Jon.”

She's silent for a few moments and then Jon hears a voice yell in the background. Sansa's voice is further from the phone as she yells back “it's some guy wanting to know if we're satisfied with our electric bill!”

There's another yell from the distance and then Sansa comes back on the line and says “no, we're very happy with our electric bill, thank you,” but he can tell she's walking and there's a sound of a door shutting. Another pause. “I didn't think you'd call.”

“I almost didn't,” he tells her. No need to lie, she already knows what a piece of shit he is.

“How's the eye?”

“You were right, needed stitches. Looks terrible.”

There's another, longer pause. “I'll get Arya.”

There's movement and a lengthy silence with muffled voices and then suddenly: “ _Jon?”_

Jon feels a smile break out over his face. “Hey, Underfoot.”

She makes a noise and says “don't call me that,” like she always used to, but Jon can hear the tears in her voice.

Arya peppers him with questions that he does his best to answer. _Yes, I'm in Montana. Yes, I'm fine. No, I haven't ridden a horse, but they have a lot of ranches around here. Yes, I was in Boston. I'm sorry I couldn't stick around._

Jon's glad he called so close to Sansa's cutoff time at six because he gets the sense that Arya would talk to him for hours and Jon doesn't think he can handle that. Even now, only twenty minutes in, he feels an ache deep in his chest. Any longer and he might suffocate in it.

“I gotta go now,” Arya sighs. “You'll call again?”  
  


“Sure,” he lies. “Remember what I said: we travel a lot so don't come to Montana to look for me, I probably won't be here. And be good for your sister, and take care of Bran and Rickon.”

He can sense the eye roll through the phone as she says “yeah, yeah.”

Then there's movement and shuffling and Sansa comes back on.

“Thank you for doing that,” she says quietly. “I can't lose her again.”

The ache in his chest twists painfully and all he can do is grunt a vague sound of agreement.

“You're not going to call again, are you?” she asks, voice low.

“No,” he says, and the line goes dead.

* * *

All this time, all this training, and Jon is always keeping an eye out for monsters that bring the cold.

Sam's first guess, after being told, is ghosts, but Jon shakes his head.

“Ghosts can make you feel cold but they don't make frost,” he says with a frown. “And Sansa said she was so cold it felt like she'd been outside for hours, just from a few seconds of being near this thing.”

They look. They read. Well, Sam reads, mostly. Jon can read just fine but he gets antsy and needs to take breaks to go outside and hit something or shoot something.

The closest thing Sam finds are legends only. Fairytale stories of beings simply called _The Others_ who rode ice spiders and could raise the dead and all the stories say they were vanquished thousands of years ago.

It's all nonsense.

As the years roll by, he begins to doubt that _monsters that bring the cold_ even exist. He wonders if Sansa had been exaggerating, if her twelve year old mind had been playing tricks on her. He tells himself to stop looking, to stop thinking about it. He has a new life now, the Starks aren't his family anymore, but no matter how hard he tries to forget, it's always in the back of his mind.

When he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know what this is or where this came from and I don't know where it's going. Does anyone even want to read this? Who knows!


	2. it hurts all the time when you don't return my calls

This poltergeist is a _dick_.

Destructive, too. Usually an entity isn't willing to destroy the building it haunts but this one doesn't seem to care. According to the mother and father, the fire had started quickly, but Jon hadn't gotten the details before learning that their son was still inside.

They'd told the family to leave, but they hadn't. Stubborn _idiots_. It was the mother who had come to them for help, but the father had refused to listen, had refused to believe, and now here Jon is, t-shirt pulled up to cover his mouth and nose, carrying the little boy out of the burning building and avoiding the objects flung his way by the poltergeist.

He manages to make it outside and stumbles to the mother who grabs her son from him and Jon lets himself sit in the cold grass as he watches the flames consume the building. He's dimly aware of Sam crouching down next to him, saying something. It's only when he feels a stab of pain that he looks down at his hand, at the blisters that bubble and burst, the skin red and inflamed. Sam is saying something, but he can barely hear it. He's hot and dizzy and he knows he inhaled too much smoke, despite trying to cover his mouth and nose. He coughs and his eyes burn and water.

There's more noises and the mother is sobbing and kneeling next to him, too, saying more things he can't hear. When he looks up again, the father looks like he's going to be sick, talking to Mormont. The last thing he sees before he passes out is Satin setting their emergency med kit down next to him.

* * *

Jon flexes his hand and ignores the pain.

He's annoyed at everything right now. His hand hurts and it's his right hand, his dominant one, the one he uses to shoot a gun and hold a knife. He's having to relearn everything with his left. Ygritte had made a joke about him having to learn to jerk off with his left hand, too, and that had pissed him off. She hadn't even asked if he was ok.

That's the job, though, isn't it? If she asked if he was ok after every fight he got into, they'd never talk about anything else. Not that they usually do much talking.

But right now, in this moment, the thing he's most annoyed about is that he has to go shopping.

He really needs to take better care of his clothes. The fire in Maine had burned a hole in his last pair of jeans and he hasn't been able to get the smoke smell out of that t-shirt. It's just two more items in a long list of sliced, bloodied, ripped, ruined clothing and Jon's been putting off getting more for too long.

Sam drives him and Satin into town and that annoys him, too. Usually Jon drives, he _likes_ driving, but his hand is still healing so they all keep coddling him like he's a baby. He's not a baby. He's almost eighteen. Well, Mormont doesn't coddle him, never has, but Sam and Satin have been fretting over him like mother hens.

They're in the thrift store because there's no point in buying new clothes that will get destroyed within the year anyway. Jon grabs anything that's sensible and monochrome and he hears Satin sigh behind him.

“You could _try_ ,” Satin drawls, running a hand over the rack of clothes. “How about this one?”

He holds up a Hawaiian shirt and it makes Jon laugh for the first time in weeks.

“Just my style,” he monotones back and Sam lets out a snort.

“But seriously,” Satin puts the Hawaiian shirt back and pulls out another shirt that looks like someone spent a lot of money trying to look like they _didn't_ spend a lot of money on it. “You could use some color. And _style_.”

“Too visible,” Jon shrugs. He sticks to blacks and greys and dark blues. Satin sighs again but puts the shirt back.

By the time Jon has a sizable enough pile that he doesn't bother to try on, they've lost Sam. And by lost, that means he noticed Gilly Craster over in the shoe section and has wandered in that direction. When Satin sees this, he gives Jon a raised eyebrow.

Sam is smitten, has been since the day he first laid eyes on Gilly two years ago. It's only been very recently that Sams' gotten up the courage to speak to her in public when they run across her, usually accompanied by at least one sister, in town.

Jon and Satin have noticed and they keep it from Mormont. Mr. Craster owns a farm on the outskirts of town and there are all sorts of rumors about him and his daughters and Mormont has warned them not to get involved. It's strictly human business and they don't deal in human business. Sometimes this bothers Jon (what's the point of all his training, of keeping off the grid, if he can't use it to help _everyone_ who needs it?)

“Should we save him before he makes a complete fool of himself?” Satin leans in and whispers to Jon, looking over at where Sam is talking to Gilly and turning bright red. Gilly is staring at Sam like he's grown two heads but before Jon can make his way over, he sees Gilly's confusion break into a smile.

“Don't think he needs our help.”

* * *

A call comes in on the Stark line that he doesn't notice until hours later. He'd been too busy with Ygritte to see the call, his burner phones shoved into a bag and dropped on the floor of her bedroom.

When he does see it, after he gets back home and thinks to check it, his stomach drops. He hasn't gotten a call on the Stark phone in years, since that last call to Arya. Since Sansa hung up on him.

His hands shake as he plays the voicemail.

_Hey._

It's Arya's voice and it does nothing to calm Jon's panic.

_I found this number in Sansa's diary. Is this... this is Jon, right?_

There's silence for a little and Jon closes his eyes and sits on the edge of his bed.

_Where are you? Why haven't you called? Are you ok? You said you'd call. Sansa told me to forget about you but she won't tell me why._

Jon realizes he's stopped breathing. Arya sounds angry but it's the same tone she'd use when she and Sansa used to fight and Sansa would say something that upset her. She'd pretend to be angry so no one would know that she was hurt.

_Can I come live with you? I don't want to be here anymore. I hate it here. I hate Aunt Lysa and Petyr. Sansa says once she turns eighteen she'll try to get us out, but that's not for another two years. I want to come to Montana and ride horses and live with you._

There's a shuffling noise in the background and a man's voice and the recording cuts off and Jon is left with a feeling in the pit of his stomach that he can't ignore.

* * *

He doesn't tell anyone where he's going, but he knows they'll find out because he uses one of the credit cards to book a flight. Normally they drive everywhere so they can't be tracked. Planes and airports are filled to the brim with cameras and security checkpoints, but Jon doesn't care. He needs to get to Boston _now._

Arya's words stick in his head, he can't forget them. _Sansa says once she turns eighteen she'll try to get us out_.

There's no logical reason why Sansa would try to leave her aunt's house and get custody of three minors that she won't be able to provide for unless there's something _wrong_ in that house. He'd missed the signs, before. The way Sansa had looked back towards the house and told him she had to wait until _Petyr_ left for work. How he could only call between four and six before _Petyr_ got home. The man's voice at the end of Arya's voicemail before it had ended abruptly.

When he gets to Boston, he takes a cab out to the suburbs, out to the address he knows by heart. It's already five by the time he gets there so he doesn't waste time before knocking. He can hear movement inside and the door opens and he sees Bran for the first time in nearly four years.

Bran stares at him for a second before his eyes widen in recognition and his face breaks into a grin.

“Jon!” Bran reaches out and pulls Jon inside. The entryway has a huge staircase in the center, but Bran pulls him off to the left, into a formal living room and Jon has never felt more out of place than he does here. The Starks had lived in a large estate, they'd had money, but it had always felt homey and lived in, full of life. This place is cold and sleek, new money if Jon's ever seen it.

Bran is much taller than Jon remembers, he's shot up to Jon's height already at only thirteen. He's chattering away and Jon can barely keep up and then suddenly there's a figure in his periphery and he has just enough time to turn before a tiny, solid mass is hurling itself at him. He manages to catch Arya and he hugs her tightly until she wriggles out of his grip and says “I knew you'd come!”

Her faith in him after all this time staggers him.

Rickon isn't far behind and stands further away, curious. Bran and Arya explain to him who Jon is and after a few minutes, Rickon seems to remember. He'd only been five when everything had happened, Jon isn't surprised he barely remembers.

“I found you in the backyard,” Rickon says, half a question, half a statement. Jon nods.

“Are we going to Montana?” Arya asks excitedly and Jon realizes he doesn't actually have a plan. After Arya's voicemail, he'd packed a bag and booked a ticket and hadn't really thought about what comes next, which isn't like him at all. Mormont has spent years drilling in the importance of planning, of always being one step ahead of your enemies, but all of his training seems to fly out the window any time the Starks are involved.

All three of them stop talking and Jon senses someone behind him and he turns to see Sansa standing in the doorway. Her face is pale, like she's seen a ghost, and maybe she has. It's been nearly two years since he was last here. Nearly two years since she hung up on him and he never called back.

“What are you doing here?” she whispers and glances behind her at the stairwell.

“I called him!” Arya says defiantly, planting her hands on her hips and Sansa turns back and stares at her.

“You can't be here, if Lysa sees you, she'll call the cops.”

“He's just visiting,” Bran says quietly, but Jon can see the excitement draining from his face. “She can't kick him out for visiting.”

“He's taking us to Montana,” Arya explains.

“Well,” he starts, but he doesn't know how to finish the sentence. He's _not_ taking them to Montana. He can't. Not without more planning, which he hadn't done. “I can't right now,” he finishes lamely and Arya looks disappointed. When Jon dares to look up at Sansa, she looks like she doesn't have the energy to be disappointed in him.

Before anyone can say anything, there's movement upstairs and they all freeze.

“You have to go.” Sansa walks forward and grabs his arm and pulls him back out to the front door. Behind them, the others protest, but their voices are low and they all keep shooting looks at the stairwell. Sansa has the front door open and she's shoving him out. “Don't come here again,” she whispers harshly. “You got their hopes up, what's wrong with you?” He opens his mouth to argue but she cuts him off. “If you don't leave, _I'll_ call the cops.”

Then she shuts the door in his face.

* * *

He doesn't leave.

He watches the house. At six fifteen, a sleek Mercedes pulls into the drive and a man gets out. He's got a tailored suit and oiled hair and a goatee and Jon hates him on sight. By ten, all the lights are out and there's no movement until morning.

Jon's used to being up for long hours, he's used to surveillance and waiting, so he barely notices the hours tick by.

When day breaks, the front door opens and Arya, Bran, and Rickon head out, all dressed in uniforms. They eventually get on school buses, Arya dragging her feet the whole way. Twenty minutes after they leave, the door opens again and the man who Jon assumes is _Petyr_ comes out with Sansa following. She's in a different uniform than the others and they walk to the Mercedes and Petyr opens the passenger side door for her. Jon watches the man's hand skim down her back and over her skirt and his fingers brush the skin of her thighs right below where her skirt ends and it takes all of Jon's training not to go over there and tear the man's throat out. Sansa ducks into the car as quick as she can and then the man gets into the driver's seat and they head out.

* * *

Jon risks calling Sam.

“Mormont's _pissed_ ,” Sam whispers. “He knows where you went.”

“Yeah, I'll deal with it when I get back. Can you find out what school Sansa goes to?”

He hears a sigh but Sam agrees anyway and fifteen minutes later, he has a text with the name of Sansa's high school, along with Arya and Bran's middle school and Rickon's elementary school just in case.

* * *

He waits another day. He makes sure that Sansa comes home on the bus, she doesn't get a ride with Petyr in the afternoons. She and the others get home close to four and Jon waits until six fifteen when the Mercedes shows back up. Overnight, he sleeps for a few hours and grabs something to eat at a gas station.

The next morning, it happens all over again.

This time he goes to her school and waits. He can't go in, he doesn't have a uniform, but he knows she gets on the buses after school, so he waits across the street in a cafe. He drinks coffee for _hours_ so they won't kick him out.

At three thirty, school lets out and he watches until he sees her hair shining through the crowd of people and he goes out and slips into the mob of students milling around where the buses have pulled up. She only notices him a split second before he grabs her arm and pulls her away from the crowd, down the street and into the first alley he can find.

“What are you doing,” she tugs her arm away from him. “You can't be here.”

“Arya told me she wants out of the house. What is he doing to you?”

He has no time for small talk, he's too angry and he's got too much caffeine coursing through him.

“He's not _doing_ anything,” she says and she seems just as angry as he is. Then it falters and she looks around, like that man, _Petyr_ , might be here. “Not anything I can report.”

“ _What_ has he done,” Jon asks again, trying to reign in his temper. “I saw him the other morning. He shouldn't _touch_ you like that.”

She doesn't seem to question that he'd been watching. She's pale and she's looking at the ground instead of him. “He hasn't done anything, really. Just... little things. He always pretends its an accident.”

“Arya...”

She shakes her head. “Do you think we'd still be in that house if he was doing it to Arya?” she whispers fiercely and she's able to look him in the eye again.

“He shouldn't be doing it to you!” His hands grip her shoulders and he wants to _shake_ her. Why hasn't she _run_?

_For them_ , he knows in an instant. She stays for _them._ She's trying to protect _them._ She can't run away because maybe then it _would_ be Arya. They all can't run away, how would they survive, where would they go? Lysa and Petyr would surely look for them.

Montana, he thinks desperately, but he knows it can't happen the minute the thought crosses his mind. He can't bring them anywhere near his world, he can't put them in danger, and Mormont would never allow it.

“I'll kill him.”

He's holding her shoulders and he says it with no hesitation. She rolls her eyes but when he doesn't say anything else, he watches her face change, annoyance slowly creeping into uncertainty.

“ _What,_ ” she breathes, searching his face for any sign that he's kidding.

He's not.

“I'll kill him,” Jon repeats, slowly, calmly. “Say the word and I'll kill him.”

She's staring at him and there's a wild sort of look on her face and he can't tell if it's panic, fear, or excitement that's making her breath quicken and her eyes dilate.

“You can't,” she finally says.

“I can,” he tells her. “But I won't if you don't want me to.”

“Where have you _been_?” her voice breaks.

“It doesn't matter.”

“It _does_ ,” she says and she brings her hands up and shoves at his chest and he allows himself to be pushed back, breaking his grip on her shoulders. “You _left us_.”

He wants to tell her that he had no choice, but he knows that's not true. He left that morning two years ago with only a brief note and a phone number. He chose not to call them. It was better that way, she just doesn't know it. He ignores the pain that twists his gut. It doesn't matter if she thinks he's a monster, he just needs her to be safe.

“I can help,” he reaches out again and her eyes go to his hand and widen when she sees the burns. He forgets about it, sometimes. It's healed over now and it really only hurts when he overuses that hand and sometimes before it rains, it'll get stiff. He'd forgotten about it and she sees it and then her eyes go to to his face, to the cut through his eyebrow and he watches her try to process the scars.

“Tell me where you've been, and don't say _Montana_.” It's a challenge, she's got her feet set apart and she somehow manages to look fierce in a private school uniform.

When did she grow up, he wonders. The Sansa he remembers used to drag him through the Winterfell gardens and make him hold a basket as she collected flowers. She'd put the flowers in vases around the house and sometimes she'd weave a crown for herself and one time she made one for Arya, who refused to wear it. Jon had worn it instead and then suddenly Arya wanted her own and soon Robb and Bran and even little Rickon had flower crowns and he remembers how delighted she'd been.

He guesses she grew up the day her parents and older brother were slaughtered, same as him.

He doesn't want this for her. He doesn't want a house that she has to fear, with a man who makes her feel unsafe, with the shadow of her dead family over her head. He wants to take her back to Winterfell and weave flowers in her hair until she smiles again.

“Let me help you, let me kill him.”

“That's _murder_ , Jon!” She's looking around again like someone will overhear. “You can't.”

He can. He knows he can, but she doesn't want to think he can. Even after he's disappointed her, she still has some belief in him.

“I can handle him,” she says, quieter, and her posture relaxes, the fight leaving her. “I promise I can handle him.”

They've reached an impasse and there's silence for a few beats before he sighs.

“Ok. But I need you to also promise that you'll call me if he does anything else. If it gets worse.”

He's not happy about it but besides killing Petyr, there really isn't much he can do. He can't take them to Montana. He turns eighteen in a few weeks, but it's not like he has a job or an education. He can't provide for them.

“I think I missed my bus,” she walks to the entrance of the alley and peers down the street and Jon has never felt more useless in his entire life.

* * *

He takes her home.

He calls a cab and when they get to her street, he takes his wallet out to get some cash. He leaves the wallet open in his hands as he gives the money over to the cabbie and Sansa grabs it out of his grasp and she stares at the ID that sticks out.

It's a fake. It says his name is Joshua Stone. It says he's twenty. It says he's legally allowed to drive in the state of California.

She gets out of the cab and he follows and he doesn't know what to say or how to explain. She still has his wallet and she pulls out card after card. IDs, credit cards. All fake. All with different names.

He thinks that's the worst part but then she gets to the back of the stack of cards and pulls out an old, folded, faded photograph. She moves to unfold it and Jon makes a noise in the back of his throat and reaches for it, but she ducks out of his way.

It's of the Starks. A family portrait Catelyn had made them sit through, they'd all grumbled about getting dressed up and getting their photo taken. All except Sansa; in the photo she's the only one truly smiling.

She carefully folds it back up and slips it into the wallet and hands it back to him. When he's shoved it into his back pocket, she moves forward and throws her arms around him and buries her face into the crook of his neck and he can feel that she's crying though she doesn't make a sound.

He holds her like that, on the corner of her street, next to the white picket fence that borders her aunt's property with the oak trees hanging over (he hasn't been hugged in _years_ , he realizes).

When she finally pulls back, she wipes furiously at her cheeks to get rid of the evidence and he pretends not to notice.

  
“You can't come here again,” she says with a sniff. She reaches out and takes his burned hand and holds it in hers and traces the scarring with the tip of her finger. “If you want to be a part of our lives then you have to be a part of it. If you don't then you have to stay away. You can't keep showing up every few years and then leaving.”

His heart in his throat, he says “ok.”

She seems to know what that means because she drops his hand and nods and turns around to walk away.

“I'll come if you call,” he calls after her and the only acknowledgment he gets is a brief pause before she continues up the front walk and inside the house.

* * *

Sam and Satin look between him and Mormont, eyes wide. Jon's just come back, he still has his bag slung over his shoulder and Mormont is red in the face, ready for a fight.

“Not now,” is all he can manage to say and then heads to his room. Mormont must have seen something in his expression, because he doesn't follow.

Jon drops his bag onto the floor and falls face first onto his bed and sleeps.

* * *

Ygritte is furious. He'd left without telling her and hadn't answered any of her calls and when she asks for an explanation, he doesn't give her a satisfactory one. He _can't_ give her a satisfactory one.

He can't adequately explain what the Starks mean to him. He can maybe explain what they _meant_ to him. He can explain why he got into the hunting business to begin with. But he's not sure he can explain why he still lets them throw him off, lets them get under his skin. Why he dropped everything to fly halfway across the country without any warning. Ygritte wouldn't understand.

She wouldn't understand that all he wants to do is bundle them up and keep them safe from the world. He wants to go back in time and do something to stop their aunt from taking them.

Sometimes, he wants to go back in time and not go with Mormont.

The thought makes him feel guilty. Mormont has given him a home, a purpose. Jon knows that without him, Sam would be in foster care. Satin would be back with his mom. This is his family now and he feels guilty for thinking that if he'd just said no, if he'd gone back to the group home in Vermont, he would be graduating high school soon. He could've gotten a job, made money, gotten them _out_ of that house. He could've stayed in touch with them, been a part of their lives. He could've visited more. He could've watched them all grow up.

He can't go back. He made his choice years ago and it's too late now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I originally rated this explicit, but I decided to bump down the rating because I realized my violence isn't *that* graphic. Hopefully I stick to it this time, but who knows, I have no idea where I'm going with this. Join me on this dumpster fire of a ride!


	3. you haven't got the time to remember how it was

When Nella Craster shoots her father in the face, it's all anyone can talk about.

Jon's gone into town for the day and he's just gotten done at the thrift store, buying anything cheap and silver that they can melt down to make bullets, when Orell passes him on the street and tells him. Jon stops in his tracks, box of silver tucked under his arm, and watches Orell continue on, telling anyone who will listen that Old Man Craster is dead.

“What was that about?”

Jon turns to find Val coming out of the general store. He's known Val for years, she's a member of the nearby Crow Reservation and they're not necessarily friends, but he likes her well enough.

“Sounds like one of Craster's daughters shot him,” Jon tells her, nodding towards Orell, who's explaining it to another Crow down the street.

Val pauses for a moment and tilts her head.

“Good.”

Jon couldn't agree more, though he wishes he could've pulled the trigger instead of Nella. Being a killer does something to you, he doesn't want that for her.

Val moves on and Jon continues on his way to the truck, where Satin's waiting.

  
“I think Val likes you,” Satin smiles, waggling his eyebrows. “What were you two talking about?”

When Jon tells him, Satin's smile drops and they spend the drive home figuring out how to tell Sam.

* * *

Sam is a mess for the next week.

He frets and paces around the living room until Mormont throws up his hands, takes the truck into town, and talks to the Sheriff. Mormont and Stannis get along. They have an understanding. The Sheriff leaves them alone, deflects anyone who might come asking about them, and Mormont helps him out with any troubles he might have. It's a good system and they try not to push their luck with him, so Mormont going and sticking his nose into strictly police business is a big deal.

Mormont comes home and explains that Nella Craster shot her father but will likely not be charged with anything. All of her sisters had come to testify that it had been in self defense, so Nella will remain free and the girls will retain possession of the farm.

Sam visibly relaxes and his gratitude makes Mormont grumble, but he ruffles Sam's hair as he passes by on his way to the kitchen.

* * *

At the funeral, Gilly stands with her sisters and her eyes are dry and her mouth is a hard line as she stares down at the casket being lowered into the dusty earth. The sun beats down and Sam is sweating profusely next to Jon. Sam doesn't seem to notice, though. The whole funeral, his eyes are on Gilly.

After, there's no reception or wake. No one cares enough to celebrate or mourn Craster's death, not even his own family.

Jon and the others are headed back to their cars when Gilly follows them out of the graveyard. She stops in front of Sam while Jon, Satin, and Mormont pretend to look away.

“Thanks for coming,” Gilly says, wiping her hands on her dress and squinting into the distance against the harsh sun.

“If you need anything, you can always call,” Sam offers and Jon's heart aches for how earnest he is. How Sam can stay so kind with all that they do, with all that they see, it's a wonder.

“I can't call you,” Gilly says and Jon watches Sam fidget. “I don't have your number.”

“Oh.” Sam stands there for a few seconds before realization crosses his face. “ _Oh_.”

Sam fumbles in his pockets, but of course he doesn't have anything to write with at a funeral. Jon rolls his eyes and opens the passenger side door of the truck and pulls out a pen and paper from the glove box, then walks over and hands it to Sam.

Honestly, Sam is the smartest person Jon's ever met, but Gilly seems to render him completely useless.

Sam scribbles out his number and hands it to Gilly, who gives him an appraising look before she nods and goes back to her sisters.

* * *

Mormont is visiting a friend in Montreal when Sam gets notice of a nest of vampires in Nebraska. Jon doesn't even hesitate to start packing up the car and Satin decides to come, too. Sam doesn't usually come on the actual hunts, he tends to stick at the ranch and be their eyes and ears (and brains).

They stop at Ygritte's bar for some food and Ygritte decides she wants to come along.

Things have been weird between them since Boston, but Jon agrees and tries to ignore the annoyed side eye from Satin. He knows Mormont and Satin don't like her. He doesn't think Sam does either, really, but at least Sam's polite about it.

The drive to Nebraska is tense. Jon turns up his Metallica tape as much as he can before Satin winces against the noise and somehow it's still not enough to overpower the thick hostility in the air.

The nest is only a few vampires, four at most, and Jon figures between him and Ygritte and Satin's magic, they'll be fine. But as Satin's setting up his spell (Jon ignores the dead animal parts and the weird jar of yellow liquid), Ygritte seems to get bored of waiting and barges into the warehouse where the vampires are sleeping.

Satin looks up at Jon, eyes wide, and Jon curses and follows after her.

The vampires aren't expecting them, but it doesn't take long for their teeth to drop down and it's a full on fight. Jon's furious at Ygritte and he takes it out on the vampires; he drops one to the ground and forces his axe through it's neck, taking it's head off.

Satin comes through with a vial of dead man's blood and incapacitates another for long enough that Jon can kill it and they do the same to a third. By the time Jon and Satin have taken out three, Ygritte has managed to kill the one she was dealing with.

When it's over, Jon is still furious.

Satin shouldn't have had to come into the warehouse. Satin is support, he does spells and deals with magic but he isn't a _fighter_. He had no business being in the fray and Ygritte had forced him to be by jumping ahead of their plans.

He spends the entire drive home in silence and by the time they get to the Wyoming/Montana border, even Ygritte notices his anger. When he pulls up to her bar, she stares at him and he stares straight out the windshield, jaw clenched so tight he thinks he might break his teeth.

“What's your _deal_?” she hisses and Jon watches Satin slide down in the backseat, trying to pretend he isn't there.

“My deal,” Jon grits out, “is that you ignored the plan and could've gotten us all killed. You could've gotten Satin killed.”

Ygritte rolls her eyes. “If he's so helpless, maybe you should've left him back in the nursery with Sam.”

Jon feels a calm sort of anger roll through him.

“Get out.”

“ _What_?”

“Get out.” Jon reaches over her and grabs the passenger side handle and pushes the door open. She stares at him and he stares right back.

“Fuck you,” she spits and slides out of the truck and she doesn't bother shutting the door behind her as she stomps into the bar.

Satin climbs into the front seat and closes the door and watches Ygritte disappear inside. Then he sighs and buckles himself in and sing-songs “ _drama”_ under his breath.

* * *

Jon holds the phone away from his ear and puts it on speaker and Sam's voice fills the car. Satin leans forward from the back seat and Mormont sighs but keeps driving without saying anything.

“What do I _wear_?” Sam is near hysterical and Jon can tell he's pacing from the creaking of the floorboards in the background. He must be out on the back porch. Jon's been meaning to fix up the boards back there, he just hasn't gotten around to it yet.

“Wear that green shirt you bought last year,” Satin suggests. “It's formal, but not too formal. I mean, you're only grabbing dinner at the pub, it's not _fancy_ , but it's still a date, so you need to look somewhat nice.”

“It's a _date_?” Sam near wails and both Satin and Jon laugh and even Mormont is trying to suppress a smile.

“She asked you to dinner,” Jon drawls. “That's a date.”

“Oh god. I'm going to ruin everything.”

“Samwell Tarly,” Mormont's voice cuts through. “You are going to go take a shower, wear whatever Satin tells you to wear, and you are going to take the Corvette to pick up that girl and you're going to use the real credit card to pay for her dinner. You are not going to ruin anything because that's not how I trained you. You understand?”

Sam's _yes sir_ comes without hesitation and afterwards he sounds more relaxed. His phone call lasts nearly the length of Ohio, until the time comes for him to go get ready.

“Text us how it goes!” Satin calls as Sam hangs up. Then, with a grin, “how badly do you think he's gonna fuck this up?”

* * *

The revenant in Providence is fairly easy to deal with. Sam would have been helpful, he's the best of all of them with _feelings_ , but Satin manages to calm the spirit down and make her accept her death so that she can move on.

That night at the motel, Jon is antsy. In the middle of the night, he gets up and wanders to the outside vending machines and grabs a bag of pretzels and sits on a curb in the parking lot to eat. He's full of energy and he knows why even though he pretends not to.

Mormont finds him some time later and lets out a groan as he lowers himself onto the curb next to Jon.

“You're getting old,” Jon stretches his legs out in front of him and crinkles the empty pretzel bag in his burned hand.

“I thought maybe you'd hotwired the car again.”

Jon drops the pretzel bag onto the ground and shrugs. “Thought about it. Sansa's graduation is tomorrow, but she told me not to come back anymore. You've been telling me that for years.”

“Do you know why I told you not to see them?” Mormont tips his head up to the night sky though they can't see any stars, there's too much light pollution in the city.

“You said they're a weakness.”  
  


“Yeah.” Mormont seems to hesitate, seems to debate whether to say anything else before he sets his mouth in a grim line. “I had a kid once. A son.”

This is news to Jon. He's been living with Mormont for six years now and he's never seen any evidence of a child. No pictures around the house, no kid clothes, no mention of it. Six _years._

“He was about your age when he died. Got himself mixed up in a deal with a demon, got torn up by hellhounds when he tried to back out. That's how I got into this business.” Jon doesn't say anything and eventually Mormont continues on. “Spent nearly fifteen years doin' this shit by myself when I found you. Then Sam. Then Satin. Here I am telling you not to get attached and I go and do it myself three times over.” Mormont gives a tired laugh. “Real reason I don't want you goin' near those Stark kids is cause one of these days you ain't gonna come back.”

Jon can't think of a single thing to say, but he doesn't have to. Mormont pulls the truck keys out of his pocket and sets them on the curb next to Jon and then goes back into the motel.

* * *

The drive to Boston is less than an hour and Jon arrives before daylight even hits. On the way, he calls Sam and wakes him up and Sam sleepily gets him the information he needs. Jon gets a motel room and sleeps for a few hours.

He wakes up around ten and still has a few hours before the ceremony and he realizes that he can't go dressed as he is. The only clothes he packed are hunting clothes and he hastily searches for the nearest thrift store and there he buys the first suit jacket that fits and a tie and hopes it's fancy enough that no one questions his presence.

At one, he arrives at Sansa's high school and stays at the edge of the crowd and follows people around the back of the school, into the football stadium. They've set up a stage in the middle of the field with chairs lined up for the students. Family and friends are sitting in the stands but Jon doesn't go up. He doesn't want to be seen, so he hangs around under the bleachers.

He watches Sansa's name get called and she walks across the field and up and over the stage and accepts her diploma and she looks around the stands, probably for Arya and Bran and Rickon. She seems to find them because she smiles and waves and Jon finds himself smiling along. He looks in the direction she'd waved and sees them.

They look ok. They look happy.

After the ceremony, he gets into his truck and waits for everyone to clear out and he drives out to their house and parks on a different street and slips through the yards and over their fence and into the copse of trees in their backyard.

He can see a party going on inside the house, but he only sees adults. There doesn't seem to be any kids, no one Sansa's age.

At some point, as the sun dips down in the sky and the shadows lengthen across the lawn, she comes outside and sits on the steps of the back patio and closes her eyes and seems to take a deep breath. She keeps her eyes shut and tips her head back to catch the last dying bits of sunlight. The heat of the day is cooling off in the way that Jon remembers of the spring days of his childhood in the northeast. Nostalgia rushes through him and he finds himself stepping out of the trees.

She must hear his movement because she opens her eyes and looks out the yard at him and he watches her startle before she realizes it's him. She seems to hesitate for a moment before she stands, looks over her shoulder at the house, then dashes across the yard towards him. When she reaches him, she pushes him back into the treeline, out of sight of the house.

“You're here,” she breathes and she doesn't seem angry.

“I know you told me not to come...”

She shakes her head and looks back at the house and bites at her lip. “I can't be gone too long. Will you wait?”

“Yeah.”

She looks at him for a long moment and he can tell she doesn't believe him. Still, she nods and heads back to the house.

* * *

He doesn't leave.

He sits on the ground under one of the bigger trees and pulls out his boot knife and picks up a piece of broken branch from the ground and starts carving into it. It's something he's started doing over the years, something he does to waste hours, to occupy his hands, to release nervous energy when he needs to be still and silent.

Hours later, after all the guests have left and the house lights have clicked off, the back door slides silently open and she comes out. She runs barefoot across the lawn and Jon puts his carving down and stands up.

“You stayed.”

“You asked me to.”

She shifts on her feet and seems to finally take in what he's wearing and she huffs out a laugh. “Why are you dressed like a car salesman from the seventies?”

“It's not that bad, is it?” Jon looks down at the brown suit jacket and the maroon tie. He knows he has no fashion sense, Satin has told him this time and again. He hadn't really thought about the colors or what it looked like, he'd just needed a suit jacket and a tie. “I didn't think they'd let me into the ceremony if I was just wearing a t-shirt.” He _is_ wearing a t-shirt and jeans, but he'd hoped the jacket and tie would be enough cover.

She tilts her head at him. “You came to my graduation?”

“I was in the area,” he shrugs.

She seems to notice his knife and carving on the ground and she sits next to them and picks up the small piece of wood and says “it's a wolf.”

He sits with her, his back against the tree, and doesn't say anything. The Winterfell estate had been full of wolves; carvings, embroidery. He remembers Ned saying once that it had been on their family crest from the old country. He'd started carving without really thinking about it.

She puts the carving down and eyes the knife, then his burned hand, then the scar through his eyebrow, then one on his collarbone that disappears beneath his shirt, but she doesn't say anything. He wonders what she thinks of him.

“You never called,” he says to try and change the subject. “Are things ok?” She nods but he can sense there's something else going on and he frowns. “He's not giving you more trouble?”

She picks up the wolf carving again and rubs her thumb across the muzzle. “No, he shouldn't be giving me anymore trouble.” She glances up at him quickly, then back down at the wolf. “He tried. A few months ago. He tried to kiss me.”

His hand instinctively reaches for the knife on the ground but he freezes when her eyes follow the motion.

“I kicked him in the...” she says and then her face turns bright red and she motions towards Jon's lap and he lets out a bark of a laugh. “And then I told him that if he ever tried it again I'd cut it off.”

Jon doesn't know what to say to that, but he feels a strange sense of pride well up in his chest. “And he's left you alone?”

“Yeah,” she's still bright red, but she sees his grin and a little smile lifts the corners of her mouth. “I think your knife really freaked him out.”

“My knife?”

“The one you left in the tree,” she looks at the tree where, four years ago, he'd stuck his phone number to it with a spare knife.

“You kept it?”

She shrugs and it makes him sure that everything with Petyr had started even before Jon's first visit. She'd kept the knife because she'd already been scared. He should have known sooner.

A shiver runs through her and he realizes that she's only wearing a thin cotton shirt and a pair of checkered sweatpants and she must be cold. He pulls off his suit jacket and hands it to her. She makes a face at it but puts it on anyway and when she's done, she shifts so that her back is also against the tree and she leans into him.

She tells him she's going to Boston College, that she plans to keep living here to keep an eye on everyone. She tells him that when she turns twenty one, her inheritance will come through; she'll get her trust and the deed to Winterfell. By the time she graduates college, Arya and Bran will both be over eighteen and she will only have to petition for custody of Rickon. With the money from the Stark estate and possession of the house, she thinks she'll have no problem getting it. She mentions a Mr. Varys, a lawyer up in Vermont who's been helping her without Petyr's knowledge. Mr. Varys is the executor of the estate, she tells him, and she seems to think Mr. Varys hates Petyr, though she doesn't elaborate on how she knows this.

By the time she finishes explaining her plans, he's shifted so that his arm is over her shoulders and she's curled up to his side against the chill in the air. He wants to tell her it's a good plan, that he's so incredibly proud of her, but he doesn't know how to say it. He's never been particularly good at words, at expressing his feelings, and now language seems to escape him altogether. Instead, he turns his head and presses a kiss against her temple and breathes in the jasmine smell of her shampoo and she sighs and presses further into his side.

They sit like that and he isn't wholly surprised when she turns her face into his neck, when she begins to nuzzle at his jawline, when she tilts her head and brushes her lips against his throat. He isn't wholly surprised that he doesn't want her to stop.

He should though, want her to stop. Should tell her to stop. Definitely shouldn't tilt his head down and towards her so that her lips brush up his jaw, across his cheek, the corner of his mouth. She lingers there, her lips barely touching the edge of his and he feels them move when she says “no one's ever kissed me. Not really.”

For all that Sansa had grown and changed, she's still the same girl he knew and he wonders what she thinks of him, if she finds it terribly romantic that he shows up in her life every few years, offering to save her. It sounds like something out of one of her fairytales.

“When I was younger, a boy named Joffrey kissed me but it was nothing,” she explains. “Then I wasn't allowed to date and I became the weird girl with dead parents and overprotective guardians.”

He knows what she wants, she's asking him for it, but he shouldn't. He can't give her some fairytale romance like she wants, like she deserves, but any sense of honor Jon might once have had is gone, it died along with Robb and Ned and Cat and so he turns to her and tilts her chin up and kisses her.

He kisses her slowly, softly, the way she deserves, even if she deserves it from someone better than _him_. Her hand fists in his shirt and she makes a small noise in the back of her throat and that does it for him, he's gone. He wraps his hand around the back of her neck (his burned hand, he hopes it doesn't disgust her) and when she parts her lips she tastes like mint toothpaste.

When he pulls back from her, her eyelids flutter open and she looks at him with glassy eyes, lips still parted and he knows that if he let himself, he'd stay here forever. He'd never leave and it's then that Mormont's voice echoes through his head. _One of these days you ain't gonna come back._

Guilt tears at his chest and he sits further back from her and lets his hand drop.

“You should go back inside,” his voice comes out rougher than normal and he feels something forming in his throat and if he didn't know any better, he'd think he was about to cry. He doesn't cry, though. Hasn't in years.

“I don't want you to go,” she whispers it and her eyes are wide and shining and he wants to take her back to Winterfell and weave flowers in her hair.

“This doesn't change anything,” he says (a lie, it changes everything). “I shouldn't have come here.”

She doesn't argue with him. She picks up the knife and the wolf and stands and she doesn't meet his eye when she hands him back the weapon. The wolf she keeps in her hands, rubbing her thumb over the muzzle.

“Go back inside.”

She nods and slips the wolf into the pocket of his jacket that she's still wearing, and she hugs her arms around her middle. She turns to go but pauses and her voice comes out small and uncertain, “sometimes I feel like you aren't going to show up again and I won't ever know if you just stopped coming around or if you're dead.”

She doesn't wait for his response before she runs back across the yard and disappears into the dark house.

* * *

When Jon gets back to Providence, it's near midnight and when he enters the motel room, both Mormont and Satin look vaguely surprised to see him. He tosses the truck keys onto the TV stand and lets his bag fall to the floor and doesn't say anything as he goes to take a shower.

He turns the hot water up as much as he can but this motel is shit and it barely gets lukewarm. He stands under it for too long, until it goes ice cold, and then he stays in even longer, letting the water numb him. He thinks of Montana, of Mormont and Sam and Satin. He thinks of Vermont, of Sansa and Arya and Bran and Rickon.

_One of these days you ain't gonna come back._

_Sometimes I feel like you aren't going to show up again._

He can't have both. His hunting world and the Stark world can't mix. He won't _let_ them mix. His primary mission is and always has been to keep them safe. To kill what killed their parents and Robb. To avenge them. Everything he's done, he's done for the Starks but he's slowly coming to realize that they never asked him to, that everything he's done has actually just been for himself and his anger. He's twenty years old and he doesn't know how to function normally anymore. Around normal people, in normal society. He doesn't belong there. He belongs in the dark.

He finally turns the shower off and dresses and settles himself into bed.

They have a long drive ahead of them tomorrow. Montana awaits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't hate me?


	4. an aversion to the light

He needs to stop.

_Stop_.

He can't stop, though, it's like his body has a mind of it's own. She bites his lip so hard it hurts but he can't _stop_. Her hand in his hair, gripping, pulling too tightly. The hand that snakes it's way down his chest to the fly of his jeans, the way she writhes on his lap, her lips moving against his, he can't fight any of it.

His brain is screaming at him to stop and it takes every ounce of strength he has to bring his hand up and push her back, but it's weak, she barely moves. She looks down at him, fury twisting her features into something ugly, something inhuman.

The hand that had been unbuttoning his jeans slides back up his chest and she digs her fingers into his sternum and her nails are too sharp, she's too strong, he can feel the punctures in his skin. She digs in slowly and Jon screams.

“Do you love me?” she breathes into his ear as blood seeps from the wounds, soaks his shirt, as she brings her other hand from his hair and back to the button of his jeans. She rocks against him and bites down on his ear.

A shotgun blast rings out and Jon can hear glass breaking and then the woman on his lap disappears in a swirl of smoke and rock salt.

Jon fumbles with the handle and when he gets the door open, he slides out, ignoring the shattered glass, and falls to his knees on the ground outside the truck.

“Fuck!” he coughs, taking deep breaths and bringing a hand up to his chest, to the blood soaked shirt and he can still feel the five puncture wounds slowly oozing.

Satin keeps the rifle poised, looking around.

“You good?” he asks and Jon wants to laugh and point at his bloodied shirt, but he knows Satin means _you gonna live_ and the answer to that is yes.

“I'm good.” He stands up and leans against the truck and grimaces at the broken window. “You could've shot me,” he frowns.

“It's just rock salt,” Satin rolls his eyes and waves the shotgun around a little. “Would've hurt, wouldn't have killed you.”

“Thanks for the lesson,” Jon grumbles. “You're paying for the window.”

“I think you'll find that whatever credit card is active right now will be paying for the window.”

Jon grabs his own rifle loaded with rock salt and a shovel and tries to ignore the stinging pain in his chest. They both head inside the house, keeping an eye out for the Woman in White.

The house is weathered, it's obvious no one has lived here for years. Her body is here, though, her cheating husband buried her in the backyard. They just need to find the bones, salt and burn them and they can leave southern California.

They've been in the southwest too long, Jon might shrivel up and die from the heat. He wasn't made for heat, he thinks. (No, he was made for Vermont, but he shakes that thought out of his head).

An old associate of Mormont's in Los Angeles had called while they were in New Mexico with an old text that Sam thought he might be able to translate, so they'd swung through and while Sam and Mormont worked on the translation, Jon and Satin had driven an hour outside the city to investigate a string of missing men dating back to the early eighties.

“Let's get this over with,” Jon heads into the backyard and looks for the marker the husband had told them about. When he finds it, he gets his shovel and begins digging. It's not his first time digging up a grave, he doesn't think it'll be the last.

He _feels_ when she shows up again and he tries to ignore the pull of her as he digs. He can hear the _whir_ of the iron bar that Satin swings through her and she dissolves into smoke again. Jon keeps digging. Again and again, she gets more aggressive and Satin does his best to keep her at bay, but at some point she knocks Satin to the ground and the iron bar falls out of his grip. When Jon hears the commotion, he looks up and sees her get on top of Satin, pin his shoulders down.

“Do you love me?” she asks, her voice like windchimes, and she leans down to kiss him.

Jon drops his shovel and picks up his shotgun and is just about to pull the trigger when Satin pushes the Woman in White off of him, rolls to the side, grabs his iron, and swings it through her. Then he gets back up and yells for Jon to keep digging.

He does and finally his shovel hits wood. He jumps into the hole he's dug and wrenches the casket open and he has a distant thought that the decaying body inside _should_ disgust him but he doesn't really have a reaction except for relief that her body is really here and this can be over. He pours the salt on her and climbs back out of the hole and then lights a match and drops it on her and he hears the ghost _scream_ behind him as she goes up in flames.

When it's over, Satin comes to help him throw the dirt back over the grave and they both head back to the truck. He lets Satin drive because now that the fight's over and the adrenaline has left him, the pain in his chest is near unbearable. He tries to distract himself by talking.

“I can't believe you managed to push her off,” he tries to laugh but it comes out as more of a wheeze. “I could barely move when she was doing her thing.”

Satin frowns and shrugs and says “guess I'm not as horny as you.” It's meant to be a joke but it comes out defensive and Jon's not sure where that's coming from.

“I just mean, when I was sixteen I _definitely_ wouldn't have been able to resist her.”

Satin's four years younger than him and Jon _remembers_ being sixteen, remembers the raging hormones, remembers letting Ygritte treat him like shit because she let him see her naked. (He likes to pretend that he's not _still_ ruled by his hormones, thank you very much).

Satin sits in silence and Jon can feel the tension roll off him.

Come to think of it, he's never seen Satin even _look_ at a woman, though some of the girls they meet look at _him._ He's a pretty kid, he could have any girl...

And there it is.

Jon isn't quite sure how he's gone four years without realizing that Satin isn't into girls. He's never really thought about it, honestly. Satin was twelve when he first joined up with them and so Jon had never even questioned his lack of interest in women.

Satin seems to realize that Jon has figured it out and his hands grip the wheel and when Jon looks over at him, he looks like he's about to cry.

“Don't tell anyone,” Satin whispers and keeps his eyes straight ahead at the road.

Jon wants to tell him that it's ok. That Sam and Mormont won't care. That _he_ doesn't care. But it's not for Jon to decide, he knows. If Satin doesn't want the others to know, it's not his place to tell them.

He nods but can't think of a single thing to say. He's not good with words and he wishes desperately that for once, he could be.

When they get back to the motel, they go inside their room and Satin seems to shrink into himself as he sits on his squeaky twin bed. Jon sets his bag down on his.

“I'm gonna take a shower and clean this up,” he waves at his chest. Satin nods and Jon rests his hand on Satin's shoulder for a long moment. Long enough that Satin turns and presses his face into it and Jon can feel the wetness on the back of his hand. “I know I'm shit at this feelings stuff,” Jon clears his throat against the lump forming in it, “but if you ever need to talk. I'm here. I'll always be here.”

Satin pushes him away and wipes at his eyes and says “I'm not talking to _you_ , you're an idiot. You also smell, go take a shower.”

Jon laughs even though it pulls at his wounds and Satin gives him a small smile and Jon feels a bit of the heaviness dissipate from the room.

* * *

They get wind of the Stark name.

A hunter up in Michigan hears it from a hunter in British Colombia who hears it from another who hears it from another. It comes through the grapevine, through connections Mormont has built over the decades. It's a whisper on the wind but it's enough.

Ygritte's bar is the closest hunter bar around and when Mance Rayder suggests they meet there, Jon wants to say no but he knows the hunter isn't going to give a shit about his petty squabbles with his ex. If Jon wants the information, he'll have to go.

When he steps into the bar, Mance lifts a hand at him and Jon nods back but Ygritte has seen him, too. He figures he should go explain himself, and he takes a step forward and barely has time to react as she pulls out her shotgun from under the bar and aims it at him. It's only his years of training that keep him from losing a leg; as it is, her shot still hits the outside of his thigh as he dives to the side. When he looks down, he sees a gaping hole in his jeans, torn flesh, gushing blood, but it seems to have missed his major artery. He'll live.

He's also going to have to buy new pants.

All the hunters in the bar have frozen but none of them react. The regulars know Jon, they know he and Ygritte had a thing. The non-regulars aren't going to stick their neck out for a stranger. When Jon looks up at Ygritte, she looks like she can't believe she just shot him and shakily lowers the shotgun and puts it back under the bar.

Jon feels a hand at his elbow and Mance Rayder pulls him up and Jon stands on his good leg and leans heavily into the man. Another hunter that Jon knows from around, Grenn, comes up on the other side and between the two of them, they get Jon sat in a booth and Ygritte comes over with two bottles, a glass, and some bandages.

“Heat up a knife, would ya?” Mance grunts and Jon opens the bottle of whiskey, pours himself a shot, downs it, then takes a second.

Mance pulls jean fragments out of Jon's wound with his fingers and Jon lets his head thump back against the wall of the booth and tries to grit his teeth through the pain. He stares at the ceiling as they pour vodka over the gash and eventually he hears footsteps and Mance tells him to hold on and he braces himself as they press hot metal against his skin to cauterize the wound and Jon can't help the sound that tears itself from his throat.

They bandage him up and Ygritte doesn't say anything and goes back behind the bar but he can tell she's shaken up and he tries not to be bitter about it.

“Well,” Mance laughs and slides into the opposite side of the booth. Grenn punches Jon in the shoulder before going back to his own table. “I _was_ gonna charge you for the information you want, but I think I'll take pity on ya and give it for free.”

“Gee, thanks,” Jon huffs, shifting and pouring himself a third shot of whiskey.

The intel turns out to be nothing, Jon is furious as he gets into the back seat of the Crown Vic an hour later. Between the blood loss and the four shots of whiskey, he's too drunk to drive, he'll sleep it off in the car.

Who the _fuck_ is Benjen Stark?

He's never even heard of Benjen Stark. Some hunter who went missing in the nineties up in the far north of Canada, last seen on King William Island. Some of the local Inuit tribespeople had talked about seeing Benjen _after_ he went missing, whispers that it was a walking corpse.

Something itches at the back of Jon's mind but he's too drunk and his leg is throbbing and he falls into a fitful sleep in the back seat and when he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

* * *

The day he turns twenty one, he goes into Mormont's office and into the bottom drawer of the desk and he pulls out the folder that holds his life. The real him.

Jon Snow.

Mormont doesn't fight him as he books a flight to Montpelier under his real name, using Mormont's real credit card.

The folder sits in his carry on the entire flight. He wants to look at the papers, remember what his life used to be. He wants to burn it, try to forget that part of him ever existed.

He's grateful that Varys & Mopatis is in Montpelier, that he doesn't have to venture any further north, any closer to the Stark estate. He feels out of place in the waiting room of their sleek office, with the secretary typing away and sending him disapproving glances. He should've worn a suit, maybe. At least he's pulled his hair back and his beard isn't completely overgrown, but he still feels shabby against the chrome and glass and white tile.

“Mr. Snow,” a voice calls and he looks up at the secretary, who tilts her head towards the office _._ “You can go in now.”

Mr. Varys is bald and round and Jon has trouble placing his age. He greets Jon with a smile but there's something in his eyes that makes Jon feel like this man knows all his secrets.

“Please, sit,” he gestures at a chair, voice soft and smooth and reassuring and Jon does as he's told. “Now, I understand you're here about the Stark will.”

“I'm not sure if they left me anything,” he places his folder on the desk and then grips the chair arms in both hands to keep himself from fidgeting with them. He'd sit on them if that wouldn't make him look like a little kid.

When Mr. Varys tells him that the Starks divided everything equally between their children, Jon is floored, because he's included. He gets one fifth of the Stark estate and it's... it's a lot of money. He stares at the papers in front of him and his vision swims.

“Except for the house,” Mr. Varys is saying. “That was specifically left to the eldest _Stark_. Eddard Stark was very clear about that, that it had to go to a blood Stark, I'm sure you understand.”

Jon can only nod.

(There's enough money to do anything. To run away. To start over. He could build himself a cabin on a lake in the middle of nowhere and never have to see anyone ever again.)

“I want to give my share to the others,” he finally manages to say. “Split it up equally, put it in their accounts.”

Mr. Varys gives him a dubious look and then starts to explain about inheritance law, about taxes on gifts, about how it would be better to send the money in smaller bits year by year instead of all at once so the government doesn't take half. He writes down figures and keeps saying words that Jon barely understands. He has a ninth grade education. Scratch that, he has an eighth and a half grade education. When he hesitates, when he has no idea how to respond to any of this, Mr. Varys gives him a look that makes Jon feel smaller than he ever has in his entire life.

Jon could kill this man. He knows _several_ ways to kill this man and he could dispose of the body and never get caught. He knows how to exorcise a demon, how to make bullets, how to hotwire a car and pick a lock and clean a gun. He knows a million different things but here, in this office, he knows nothing.

“I have a guy,” his voice is low, he feels _ashamed_. “You can talk to him about all this.”

“Of course,” Varys says smoothly and pulls all the paperwork back with a patronizing smile. “We'll get it all sorted.”

* * *

Sam agrees to help, Jon knew he would.

All Sam has to do is read a book on it and he knows everything there is to know about finances and taxes and all the things Jon can barely fathom. When he hears Sam on the phone with Mr. Varys, he can't help but wonder why things are so _complicated_. There's no way he could ever survive in the real world.

* * *

Jon teaches Gilly how to drive.

She and her sisters had never been allowed, really. Only Nella had ever learned so that she could go into town if their father didn't feel like it. But now Craster's gone and the girls can do whatever they want.

Mormont gives her one of the cars on his lot and pretends to grumble when she kisses him on the cheek. Jon teaches her how to drive it and when she gets frustrated she argues and they both end up yelling at each other as she stalls the engine _again_. By the time they get back to the house, they're still arguing but there's no anger behind it.

Jon _likes_ Gilly. He likes the way she treats Sam. She's like Jon, she's got no real education and she has even less of a tolerance for math than Jon does, but she looks at Sam like he's everything and tells him how smart he is. Sam blushes and never knows what to say.

Gilly makes them packed lunches to take on their shorter trips. She huffs and mutters in the kitchen as she prepares meals, going on and on about their lack of nutrition. Satin groans because he now has to eat vegetables but he eats them anyway.

Jon takes her out driving as often as he can and she gets the hang of driving stick and they still argue the whole time but she's grinning and so is he.

She sort of reminds him of Arya. She's small, petite, she looks like she should shrink into the shadows if you look directly at her but she _doesn't_. After everything she and her sisters have gone through, she _doesn't._

When she eventually just moves in with them, no one questions it.

One day she comes home with a bag from the thrift store full of clothes in Jon's size and in the right colors and he tells Sam to marry her immediately. Sam blushes furiously and Gilly laughs.

It's the most like home Montana has ever felt.

* * *

He's covered in mud and swamp water and he drips onto the dirt road as Mormont laughs. “You ain't gettin' in the car like that.”

“So I'm supposed to walk back?” he growls and pushes past Mormont and gets into the passenger side of the Crown Vic. “Next time Sam gets a hit on some voodoo shit, we leave it alone.”

“Had enough of the bayou?”

Jon glares at him and they both open their windows and try to ignore the smells wafting off him. Luckily their motel room has an outside entrance so no one has to see him covered head to toe in swamp muck. He showers it off and examines himself for injuries. None, luckily, at least nothing that broke the skin. He doesn't want to think about the gangrene from any open wounds being exposed to whatever bacteria laden water he'd been thrown into by the Rougarou.

When he finally feels clean again, he flops down on the motel bed and Mormont's already got the TV tuned to some reality TV show. Mormont _loves_ reality TV. The trashier, the better.

Some woman is sobbing on screen and Jon leans down and pulls his bag onto the bed and gets his phones out and he checks through them all for messages. When he gets to the Stark line, there's a voicemail.

He makes some excuse to Mormont about grabbing something from the vending machine and he heads outside to the parking lot. The insects are making a racket out here and the night air is still hot and humid. Five minutes and his t-shirt is already sticking to him. Doesn't matter, though. He plays the message.

_Hey._

It's Arya and he squeezes his eyes shut and leans against an old Honda that doesn't belong to them.

_You gave away your money. Sansa got a call from the lawyer and he said... does this mean you aren't coming back? That you're never coming back? Sansa thinks so. You can. You can come back. Winterfell is just as much yours as it is ours. I don't care if your last name is different, you'll always be a Stark to me. To us._

There's silence on the line but she doesn't hang up for a long while and he listens the whole time.

He doesn't call her back. There's nothing to say, not really.

* * *

He tries to tell himself he's done with the Starks. He's given away his inheritance. Sansa has a plan. It's a good plan and she doesn't need him.

Satin needs him. Mormont needs him. Sam and Gilly need him. The people he saves need him. And anyway, he's good at hunting. It's just about _all_ he's good at. He hunts, he fights, he gets ripped open and knocked out, bruised and battered, but he gets up and does it all again the next day.

There's a girl in Little Rock that he saves from a demon and when she invites him back to her place, he goes.

He doesn't even really _want_ her, but it's been nearly two years since Ygritte and he's so... He's _not_ lonely. He's fine. He has Mormont and Sam and Satin and now Gilly. He has his friends, his new family. He's not _lonely_.

Except that when the girl touches him, _truly_ touches him, it feels foreign. She isn't hurting him and she isn't tending a wound. It's not a friendly slap on the back or a handshake or even a hug from a grateful victim he'd saved.

He finds himself both revolted by and desperate for her touch and he fucks her in her apartment and he slips out while she's asleep and doesn't leave his number.

* * *

Gilly gets pregnant and it's decided that Sam will never come on a hunt again.

He tries to protest but his heart isn't in it. Mormont is vehement, anyway. Sam will stay at the ranch. He'll stay safe, always. The baby will never lose it's father.

Jon isn't sure how to feel. Sam staying at home doesn't bother him. He rarely comes on the hunts anyway, and usually only those that require his presence.

But the idea of a _baby_ in their home, surrounded by what they do. The baby is nothing, the size of a pomegranate seed, Gilly tells them (she struggles to pronounce pomegranate and then asks Sam what that is), but Jon already feels a desperation to get them away from the hunting world. To get them away from _him._

When he brings it up to Sam, Sam refuses in a way that surprises him.

Sam is easygoing, he doesn't like confrontation, but when Jon suggests that maybe he shouldn't be in the kid's life, Sam is angry, insistent that Jon _will_ be a part of their lives.

“I'm not letting you push me away,” Sam says with finality.

* * *

Jon's starving. He'd spent the day working on the car, which had decided to overheat in the middle of the desert highway. It had taken him a while, but he'd managed to get it running again until they got to the next town and now he's exhausted from the hot sun beating down on his back as he bent over the engine.

He's wants nothing more than to shove this burger into his face and then go take a shower and wash the sweat and grease off of himself and then go to bed. He does so, in that order, but before he gets into bed, he checks his phones like he does every night.

There's a voicemail on the Stark line.

_It's Sansa._ _I'm at Winterfell. I think maybe I need your help._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guysss I don't know where I'm going with this?? I'm not 100% happy with this chapter tbh. I have bits and pieces that I know I want to do but connecting them in this chapter was difficult for me.


	5. you cannot run or ever, ever escape

Dread fills him with every passing mile. It starts as a tingle at the base of his spine, fans out through his body in waves, pulses through his veins, fills his lungs until he can barely breathe, sits in his stomach like a stone.

He'd flown from Nevada to Vermont and while he was in the air, Mormont had arranged a car for him and if the circumstances were different, he'd appreciate the '72 Chevelle that hums along the Vermont roads. He'd appreciate the shining black paint, the cracked leather seats, the roar of the engine. But he doesn't.

He doesn't appreciate the tree lined mountains in full summer bloom. He doesn't appreciate the clean, sharp air. He doesn't appreciate the cloudless sky, the feeling of freedom of driving where no one else was.

All he can feel is dread.

* * *

He makes the turn off the main road and Winterfell comes into view.

The first glimpse of it, far away and through the trees, makes his breath catch in his throat. He continues on, though, forces himself forward and when he gets to the gated drive, he sees that one of the gates is already open. Only one side, though, like it had to be pushed open manually, not like the automatic swinging of the double gates that he remembers Ned installing. He drives through, barely enough room to fit a car, and the gravel crunches under his tires as he slowly makes his way up the drive.

Light filters through the trees, less than he remembers, the trees themselves are denser than in his memory, overgrown and wild.

When he gets to the house, he sees a black Mercedes SUV that he doesn't know the model of. Jon's never driven a luxury car. Hell, he doesn't think he's ever driven a car made after 1995. He parks the Chevelle behind the SUV, the thrum of it's engine feeling overly loud and out of place but when he shuts it off, there's only deafening silence.

He gets out, gravel shifting under his boots, and looks up at the house for the first time in nearly a decade.

Ivy has taken over almost the entire stone facade, winding up columns and over window panes. The roof looks like it's fallen in near the dormer window and one of the chimneys in the middle is gone completely. The gardens that line the front of the house are barely recognizable, no longer meticulously kept by Catelyn's watchful eye.

He hears a creak and turns towards the front door and she's there, one hand braced on the door, the other raising in a semblance of a wave before dropping to her side.

His feet move, barely, small steps at first before he gets himself together and he climbs the front steps to the house and he tries to ignore the way his heart slams against his ribcage.

“You're here.”

  
He can't tell if it's a question or a statement so he just nods and for a moment she moves forward like she's going to hug him, but changes her mind and then backs into the house and holds open the door for him.

He steps into the entryway and a shiver rips down his spine. The dark wood paneling, the front stairwell twisting up, the bench that used to hold their shoes and coats. The way the light filters through the windows halfway up the stairs, turning soft and muted through the old glass. The chandelier is gone and through the doorway to the sitting room, he can see plastic covering the furniture, but none of that matters. It doesn't matter that it smells musty and stale. He's _home_.

“Yeah,” she says after a few seconds. “Took me some time, too.”

He steps forward and traces his fingertips along the carvings on the banister, wolves running, vines twisting. The entryway rug is gone and he notices the rug is also missing from the sitting room. Pictures and paintings, gone or covered. Someone had gone through the house and covered everything up, taken anything away that might get dusty. He wonders who.

The last time he'd been in this house, a social worker had walked him straight up to his room, watched him while he packed a few bags, and then took him right back out. The last time before that was finding Ned and Cat and Robb dead.

“Do you want to look around?” she says, she keeps her voice low, like talking at a normal volume will break the dream they're in, like Winterfell will disappear if she makes too much noise.

_Yes_.

“No,” he clears his throat and looks back at her. “You said you needed help?”

She nods and fidgets with the hem of her top. He tries not to watch, tries not to let his eyes linger on the twist of her fingers, tries not to let his gaze drop to the shorts she's wearing, to her long legs below that. But he also can't bring himself to look at her face, he can't look at her eyes, he can't bear to see any sort of disappointment. He can't look at her lips. It's been years and he can still remember how they felt, he can still remember the way she tasted. He has actively tried not to think about her for all this time.

He was supposed to be done with the Starks.

He settles his gaze somewhere around her right ear. Close enough to her face that maybe she won't notice he can't meet her eyes.

“I got the deed, obviously,” she hesitates and then turns and walks and he follows her into the kitchen.

(He remembers early mornings here, Catelyn trying to wrangle them all, getting them ready for school. He remembers the smell of Christmas ham and sitting at the counter doing homework and Catelyn humming as she bakes. And he remembers their bodies, Cat near the sink, blood pooling from her throat, Ned by the doorway, head almost completely off.)

Her voice brings him back to reality. “I don't graduate for another year, but Mr. Varys said the power and water's been off here for a while so I figured this summer I'd come take a look and see what needs to be done.”

Her purse is on the butcher block island, a pair of large sunglasses and an iced coffee sitting next to it, slowly dripping condensation onto the wood. He sees other evidence of life. A stack of paperwork. A sketchpad and graphite pencils on the side bar. A soccer ball by the door to the back garden.

“Are they here?” he asks, but he knows the answer, he hasn't heard any other noises, it's just him and Sansa.

She shakes her head. “I sent them back to the hotel. But they came with me this summer to help out. I figured we could get a lot of small stuff done. Cleaning, small fixes. A few days ago I sent Rickon into the basement to see if he could find the fuse box. I thought maybe we just needed to turn it back on...” They're interrupted by her phone buzzing on the kitchen counter, the sound loud and out of place. They both look at her phone and Jon half hopes, half dreads that it's Arya or Bran or Rickon, but it isn't. The picture on the display is of a boy that looks about her age, with a wide toothy smile and sandy blonde hair.

She quickly reaches over and rejects the call.

“Boyfriend?” he asks and he's proud of how even his voice sounds.

“Harry,” she says, like that explains it. There's silence for a few moments and he decides he can't deal with _this_ is right now.

“You sent Rickon into the basement?” he prompts and she seems relieved at the change of subject.

She looks at his burned hand, the scar on his collarbone, the one through his eyebrow. More, smaller ones, ones he's accrued in the past three years that she's never seen before.

“It'll be easier if I just show you.”

She heads through another doorway, towards the back of the house and they get to the back stairwell and Jon freezes, his eyes landing on the ground where Robb's body had been and it strikes him as infinitely unfair that he and Sansa and the others will grow up, they'll get to live their lives, but Robb will forever remain fourteen years old. She takes a deep breath and passes the spot and heads to the stairwell to the basement.

There's a flashlight on a table nearby and she grabs it and flicks it on and heads down the stairs and Jon follows. There's a few small windows near the ceiling, dug slightly below ground level, but it doesn't let in nearly enough light and Sansa uses the flashlight to sweep the room so he can see. There's a workbench off to the side with tools piled on it, metal shelves lining the walls with boxes and bins. Old bikes, snow shovels, bags of ice salt; dust and cobwebs and the scent of mold. A myriad of things that don't look out of place in a basement.

Except for the door.

He sees it almost immediately and he sees Sansa nod out of the corner of his eye. He holds out his hand for the flashlight and she gives it to him and he walks closer and keeps the beam of light trained on the door.

There are gouges in the dirt on the floor, and he can tell a set of shelves had been in front of it. The shelves are currently sitting skewed off to the side and if he looks close enough, he can see shoe prints in the dust and dirt around it.

The door is half rotted wood set into the stone around it with an old iron doorknob. An old door for an old building, it should be normal. What isn't normal, why Sansa must have called him, is a spiral symbol drawn in the center of the door in what looks suspiciously like old, dried blood. Under the blood symbol are other symbols carved into the wood, faded and worn nearly smooth with age.

“Rickon saw it when he was looking around,” she whispers from behind him. “He and Arya pulled the shelf away. It's locked, they tried to open it. That's blood, isn't it.” It's not a question and he doesn't answer. “Should we call the police?”

He laughs at that and turns to face her. “Why would you call the police?”

“That's _blood_ ,” she whispers furiously, waving her hand at the door.

“Not illegal,” he says as he swings the flashlight back at the door. He focuses on the knob, on the keyhole. It's old, should be fairly easy to pick. The workbench along the far wall has enough tools and soon he finds two slim screwdrivers that should be fine enough for lockpicking. Not for any modern door, but something this old shouldn't need too much finessing.

“You should go upstairs,” he says as he sets himself down on the ground in front of the door. He tries to tuck the flashlight between his shoulder and chin, tries to keep the light trained on the keyhole, but it's a struggle. She sighs behind him.

“I'm not going anywhere.” The flashlight is removed and she holds it steady, trained on the door.

When he looks back at her, she's got her face set in a determined frown and he knows he won't get anywhere arguing with her, he remembers that look. It reminds him a lot of Cat. “At least move back a little,” he says and she at least does that. He doesn't know what's behind the door, but if it's something bad, he'd like her to be as far as possible.

He sets his impromptu lockpicks into the keyhole and before he can really begin to twist them around, there's a loud noise and a bright light and something slams into his chest and throws him back so hard that he crashes into the shelving unit. It cracks into his shoulder and knocks the wind out of him and he lays on the floor, unable to take a breath.

Sansa leans over him, terrified, and her voice is muffled by the ringing in his ears but slowly it comes back into focus and he finally sucks in a huge breath.

“What _was_ that, are you ok, oh my god,” she's babbling, looking between him and the door, face pale.

“I'm good,” his voice comes out more like a wheeze than anything else and she helps him sit up. When he's up, he frowns at the door. It's still closed, it looks exactly like it had, like nothing even happened. He stands up, Sansa's hands at his elbow, her grip stronger than he expected. When he's up, he leads her back upstairs and back into the kitchen and he grabs one of the graphite pencils and flips the sketchpad open. The drawings inside are good and he stares down at the comic book panels, at the angular characters and the dramatic shading.

“Bran,” Sansa's voice is soft. “He got into RISD.”

He can only nod and he flips past Bran's drawings to a blank page and sketches out the swirl symbol and some of the others he thinks he remembers carved into the wood. Then he heads out to his car, Sansa trailing him like a worried mother hen, and he grabs his duffel and digs through it until he finds his main phone. He takes a picture of his drawing and sends it to Sam accompanied by a dozen question marks.

“Who'd you send it to?” she asks, still eyeing him like he's about to collapse at any second (to be fair, he _is_ leaning heavily on the Chevelle, his left shoulder and all down his back is one big ache and he still feels a bit disoriented).

“A friend.” He doesn't know how to explain Sam. He doesn't know how to explain _anything_ to her.

“Do you need to go to a hospital?”

He shakes his head, the last thing he wants is to go to a hospital.

“Well, I think we should go to the hotel, then. I can book you a room, you should probably lay down at least.”

He wants to argue but he's suddenly exhausted, and not just from being thrown back six feet into a metal shelving unit. He's exhausted from his flight, from the drive, from being back _here,_ from seeing _her._

She runs back inside and grabs her things and then directs him into the passenger side of her car, explaining that he's in no state to drive and he doesn't even know where the hotel is. The drive to town is nearly silent and when they get to the main road, he stares out the window and he can't believe how little has changed. The ice cream shop they used to frequent in the summer, the old elementary school, the soccer fields he and Robb played in, it's all here. He watches a group of kids run around the field, laughing and wild and carefree.

She pulls into the lot of one of the old colonial mansions that had been converted into a hotel. After she parks, she takes his duffel despite his protests and leads him to the front desk and books a room for him. He's grateful, honestly, he can barely keep track of what's happening between the pain in his shoulder and how tired he is and he simply follows her up the grand staircase in the center of the entrance hall and up to the third floor. She keys into his room and sets his bag on the desk near the window.

“Are you sure you're ok? Are you sure you don't need to go to a hospital or something?”

He shakes his head and her mouth twists into a frown and she sighs.

“At least let me take a look at it.” She turns him to face away from her, towards the wall and he tries not to make eye contact with her through the mirror. She pulls at the hem of his shirt and he dutifully lifts his arms up and he tries not to wince at the pain in his left shoulder because she can see his face through the mirror and he doesn't want her to think he's weak. “Jesus,” she breathes and he didn't realize how hot his skin is until he feels her cold fingers brush against his shoulder and down his back.

“How bad is it?”

She turns him around to face her and he looks over his shoulder towards the mirror so he can see his back in the reflection. A bruise is already forming, mottled and purple and starting to swell, and he can clearly see a vertical line from his shoulder to halfway down his back where the edge of the shelving unit had caught him.

“Had worse,” he shrugs with his good shoulder and she frowns at him. Once again, her eyes go to the cut through his eyebrow, down to the one on his collarbone. She's never seen him without his shirt before and he can see her taking it all in, the claw marks, the punctures, the cuts.

  
“Where have you been?” Her hand comes up and traces at the cut on his collarbone, follows a path across his torso with her fingertips, connecting his scars like constellations. She gets to the one on his hip and traces it down and he has to grab her wrist as her fingers dip below the waistband of his jeans.

“Sans,” he tries to make it a warning but it comes out a plea, “don't.”

Instead, she steps in closer to him and he can feel her breath fan out across his neck and her hand doesn't move and the backs of her fingers brush along the skin of his stomach. He can feel his muscles clench under her touch and his grip on her wrist tightens as she whispers “why not?”

He could tell her it's because she has a boyfriend. He could tell her it's because he doesn't want her. He could tell her he's too tired. They'd all be lies, of course, but he could still tell her them.

What he says instead is “cause I'd never be able to leave,” and it might be most honest thing he's said in nearly ten years.

Her shoulders slump and her hand falls away and she takes a step back and he thinks she mutters “ _maybe I don't want you to_ ” but he pretends not to hear it.

She hands him back his shirt and helps him put it on and he can tell she's pouting, that she wants to argue with him more but she's holding herself back and it makes him want to laugh with the familiarity of it. When he sits on the edge of his bed, she drops to her knees and helps him untie his boots and get them off and he settles himself onto his stomach because he doesn't think he can take any pressure on his back.

His eyes are drooping and he vaguely hears her leave the room and then she comes back and he startles when she presses a towel full of ice to his shoulder.

“Gonna melt on me,” he mumbles but doesn't move to try and get the ice off him.

“I'll make sure it doesn't.” She kicks her own shoes off and lays down on her side next to him, facing him, one arm tucked under her head, the other holding the bag of ice to his shoulder.

Sleep pulls at him and he's too tired to care that he's staring at her.

“One of these days, you're going to tell me where you've been,” she whispers it and he knows it's true. He'll tell her. He's tried keeping her from this, keeping the Starks from his world, but it seems like no matter how far he runs, he can't escape them. And now that he's this tired, now that he's drifting off to sleep, he can admit to himself that he doesn't _want_ to escape them.

“Ok,” his voice is low and he's not sure she hears it.

She lets the bag of ice sit on his shoulder and the hand that had been holding it comes and brushes a piece of hair out of his face and she smooths it back, running her nails gently along his scalp, the movement so soft and careful it feels foreign.

He falls asleep like that and when he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this might be the least time-jumpy chapter I've ever written in any story. This is shorter than the other chapters cause it started getting way too long and I decided to cut it here.
> 
> Also, did I make Bran into Seth Cohen? Maybe. Did I spend way too much time googling New England castles and old architecture? Absolutely.
> 
> For anyone who cares, Winterfell is semi based on Jennings Hall in Vermont (which also inspired the book The Haunting of Hill House).


	6. you cannot run or ever hide it away

When he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

He dreams of running through the house with Robb, of daring each other to go into the basement. He dreams of finding a door, of Robb twisting the handle and tugging on it, of runes and dried blood. He dreams of Ned's anger, telling them to stay out. He dreams of going back upstairs and seeing Cat nursing baby Arya and Sansa sitting in her chair at the counter, eating Cheerios and swinging her little legs happily. He dreams of the frown on Cat's face, the look she gives Ned, the look she gives the basement door.

* * *

He wakes to a pounding that he thinks is his head but is actually the door to his room, accompanied by a “ _Jon Jon Jon Jon Jon_ ” and he groans and slides out of the bed, his shoulder stiff and barely usable. By the time he gets to the door, he can hear other voices and he feels a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth and when he opens it, they look at him like they can't believe he's real.

“Hey Underfoot,” his voice comes out crackly from sleep and he clears his throat.

Arya squares her feet and narrows her eyes and says “ _don't call me that_ ” and punches him in the shoulder and for a moment his vision goes white.

“Sansa said he was hurt, you idiot!” Rickon pipes up from the back and Bran sighs loudly.

“Oh shit, sorry,” Arya looks genuinely concerned and he tries to wave her off.

“You guys are making a real scene out here,” Jon notes and steps back to let them into his room. “Speaking of, where _is_ Sansa?”

“Taking a shower,” Bran says as Arya immediately goes to his duffel bag and starts rifling around in it. “She told us not to bother you, but I couldn't stop these heathens.”

“You weren't protesting too much,” Rickon rolls his eyes and joins Arya in looking through Jon's things.

He wonders if he should stop them, but somehow their familiarity, their lack of boundaries makes his chest feel warm. Plus, there's nothing bad in _that_ bag. His weapons bag is back in the Chevelle (not his _own_ weapons, he'd flown here and wouldn't have been able to get his whole kit through TSA, but the bag had been helpfully provided by the same contact of Mormont's that had provided the car).

“Why do you have so many phones?” Rickon pulls out at least four. “Is this a _flip phone_?”

He forgot about the phones.

“Why do you own so much flannel?” Arya asks at nearly the same time.

Jon feels slightly overwhelmed. There's something in the back of his brain that's trying to get his attention, but there's so many _Starks_ in the room and they're all talking like it hasn't been years since he last saw them. They're talking like he _belongs._

“Are you _kidding_ me?”

They all freeze and turn towards the doorway where Sansa stands, hands on her hips. She's in a large t-shirt and Jon assumes she's wearing shorts under it and there's a towel across her shoulders to catch the water dripping from her hair. “I told you to let him sleep!”

“He was awake,” Arya says and Bran scoffs.

“Only cause you knocked on the door and yelled his name for five minutes.”

Arya takes a half-hearted swing at Bran, who ducks out of the way and behind them, Rickon holds the flip phone up to the light, squinting at it like he's examining an alien object. The whole thing is so bizarre that Jon can't help but laugh.

“What's the S for?” Rickon asks, showing everyone the back of the phone where there's an S drawn in old, faded sharpie.

“It's the Stark line,” the words leave his mouth before he realizes it and they all look at him and something in Arya's expression changes. He can't bring himself to look at Sansa right now.

“Ok, everyone out,” Sansa's voice is a little higher than usual, like she's trying to be overly cheerful. “Let's start getting ready.” She turns to Jon. “We're going to the house today, but we're gonna grab breakfast beforehand.”  
  
He nods and tells her he needs to take a shower first and she hustles everyone out of his room. In the shower, he keeps the water from hitting his back directly. He'd taken a look at the bruise before he got in and it's worse today, deep purple and near black, the skin splitting where it swelled the most.

While he's in the shower, without the chaos of the Starks, he can think again and the nagging thing in the back of his brain takes shape.

He and Robb had found that door. He barely remembers, he must have been four, maybe five at the time, and what he usually remembers of the basement is that the door was always locked and they weren't allowed down. He'd never thought that much about it, forgotten about the whole incident until last night. He wonders if his brain is filling in gaps, or if Ned's anger had been real. If the terrified look on Catelyn's face had been real.

The idea stays in his mind through his whole shower, as he slowly dries himself off and dresses, trying to force his stiff arm to move. He shoves his feet into his boots but he's already exhausted and his shoulder is throbbing so he doesn't bother to tie them and he grabs his main phone and his wallet before he heads out.

He finds them down in the buffet area with a mass of food already on the table. He slides into a chair and Sansa pushes a mug at him.

“I got you coffee, wasn't sure what you put in it. And I don't know what you wanted, but I remember you like bacon.” She slides a plate of bacon at him with some toast and then she hesitates. “Right?”

“Yeah,” he feels the same warmth from earlier unfurl in his chest. “I like bacon.”

He eats and he's hungrier than he thought he was, but he never has to get up for more food. Plates keep appearing in front of him without prompt, he never has to ask, they all keep getting up and going to the buffet for him until he's finally full.

As they eat, they talk about Bran starting at RISD in the fall, about Rickon's soccer championship from last year, about Arya's new job at a gym. It's all so mundane, so _normal_ and Jon feels slightly disconnected and out of place.

“How's your shoulder?” Sansa asks lowly as the others talk.

“Fine,” he tries but Sansa just looks at him, head tilted slightly to the side and she stares at him until he gives in. “Stiff. Bruising's worse. Split a little.”

She tsks and takes a sip of her coffee. “You should put something on it.”

“It's not bleeding too bad,” he tries to argue. It isn't, really. It had oozed a little after the shower, but he'd gotten most of the blood off with a towel and he'd put two shirts on to hopefully sop up anything else. When he looks over at her, she's got one eyebrow raised and he somehow knows he's already lost this argument.

* * *

Before they leave, she takes him back to his room and makes him strip off his shirts and sucks in a breath when she sees the progression of his back. She calls Arya and tells her to go out and grab some things from the drug store down the street and when Arya comes up, she's got the others following behind her.

“Oh, _sick_ ,” Rickon breathes in fascinated horror.

“ _Arya_ ,” Sansa tries to scold, tries to push them out of the room, but its too late, they've already seen him.

The three of them perch on the bed while Sansa brings him into the bathroom and dabs at his back with antiseptic and then some sort of cream. She has a roll of gauze, but she doesn't quite seem to know how to get it to stay since the area is so large and she ends up winding it around his ribcage so that he looks like an injured Civil War soldier and it makes both of them laugh as he lifts his arms and she unrolls it around him again and again.

* * *

They take two cars, Sansa and her SUV and Arya's Miata, electric blue and impractical for Vermont in any other season except summer. Bran says he'll go with Sansa because driving with Arya makes him nauseous and even Rickon seems to agree, so Jon finds himself in the passenger seat of the Miata and he grumbles about the lack of leg room as Arya laughs.

She's a terrible driver.

Well, he supposes she's actually a _good_ driver, because despite how fast she goes and how sharply she takes turns, they never crash. They arrive at Winterfell long before the others and when Arya sees his Chevelle, she gets out of the Miata and starts circling it, letting out a whistle of appreciation.

“Didn't know you liked cars.”

She gives him a look and tilts her head and it eerily reminds him of Sansa before she says “it's not like you were around a lot.”

He doesn't know what to say to that. There's so much he missed. Arya likes cars, she got a job at a gym and seems to have foregone college. Rickon plays soccer, just like he and Robb used to. Bran is an artist, he's going to _school_ for it. Arya was only ten when everything happened, he's been out of her life nearly as long as he was in it. Bran even less. Rickon barely remembers him.

He was a fool for thinking he had any place in their lives.

“Do you know a Benjen Stark?” he asks to change the subject and Arya frowns.

“Sounds familiar. I think maybe dad had a brother named Benjen? I don't remember, honestly.”

He doesn't like that answer.

He doesn't like his dream.

He doesn't like that door in the basement.

* * *

Sam had sent a text back last night with the words _on it_ in response to his photo, but Jon's heard nothing since. He sighs as he puts his phone away as Sansa finally pulls up in the SUV.

“She didn't kill you,” Bran remarks.

“She tried a few times,” he says back and Arya huffs in annoyance.

They get quiet as they head inside. They've all been back, but never all together (well, not _all_ together. Robb isn't here. Robb will never be here again.)

The kitchen seems to be home base, which feels right but also terribly wrong. Right because it's where the heart of their home had been, back before everything. Wrong because this is where Ned and Cat died. Jon supposes the others don't really think about that, they hadn't seen the bodies. Jon had led them to the front stairs and immediately outside after calling the police. Sansa had seen Robb, briefly, but the others had seen none of it and he's eternally grateful for that. He doesn't need it haunting them the way it haunts him.

“Hey Sans, didn't we have an Uncle Benjen?” Arya asks as they all set their things on various surfaces in the kitchen. Bran sits at the small kitchen table and flips his sketchbook open and starts to draw and Rickon kicks at the soccer ball near the back door.

“Rickon, no soccer inside,” Sansa scolds before turning back to Arya. “Yeah, he died...” she waves vaguely behind her as if to say _a long time ago_. “I never met him and I don't think dad liked talking about it but I remember mom mentioning him. Why?”

  
“Jon asked,” Arya says airily and hops up onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter.

Sansa looks at him sharply but doesn't say anything. He wonders what she knows, what she guesses. What she makes of his scars and the door and his questions. She saw Robb's body, she heard the thing that killed him moving downstairs. She'd felt the cold.

She must have some idea, he thinks, because she called _him_ when she found a locked door with runes and blood symbols. She must know he's not _normal._

* * *

Jon's fairly useless as the others clean. None of them will let him do anything and insist that he lets his shoulder rest, so while Sansa makes them all open windows and dust any uncovered surfaces and mop floors, Jon wanders.

He finds himself upstairs, in his childhood bedroom on the third floor. It's the same as he left it. The same blue checked bedding, posters hung on the wall, comic books strewn across the desk. He pulls up the plastic sheeting and sits at his old desk chair which makes a squeak of protest under his adult weight. Batman, Superman, the X-Men. He finds himself smiling as he pulls over an old Dark Phoenix issue. He remembers arguments with Robb over who the best one was, over which X-Man they'd be. Jon had always wanted to be Wolverine.

“I think Bran got his love of comics from you.”

He turns to see Sansa standing at the door of his room and she seems to hesitate a bit before she comes in and sits on the end of his bed and tilts her head to look at the comics on his desk.

“He took a few. When the social worker brought us, he went into one of your rooms and grabbed a bunch of them. Maybe they were Robb's. He read them obsessively for years and then started drawing his own. I'm surprised you left yours.”

He shrugs and ignores the pain in his shoulder. “I wasn't allowed to take too much, the group home only had so much room, and comic books seemed stupid after...” He doesn't say _after finding the bodies_ , but he doesn't have to.

“We tried to get Lysa to take you,” her voice is low. “We should've tried harder.”

“Don't.” He can't stand the waver in her voice, the sadness on her eyes. “We were _kids_.”

“We should've tried harder,” she insists and her head falls so he can't see her face anymore but he can _hear_ the tears in her voice. “You wouldn't have been alone. You wouldn't have all those scars. I know you won't tell me what happened to you, but I know it's not _good_ , Jon, I should've tried _harder_.”

He finds himself sliding off the chair and onto his knees in front of her and he tries to make her look at him as he says “there was nothing you could've done. You were twelve.”

“I could've convinced Petyr,” she says in a whisper and he feels an ugly sort of fury rage through him and he tries to push it down.

“ _Petyr_ ,” he spits the name, “would never have let me in the house because that would have made you less vulnerable in his eyes. I wouldn't be surprised if he's the reason Lysa wouldn't take me in the first place.” He brings his hand to her face and his thumb traces her bottom lip that he wants so badly to lift into a smile.

She finally does look at him, eyes wet and red-rimmed and wide, like that had never occurred to her. He wonders if she's spent this whole time blaming herself and the idea enrages him. He wants to drive to Boston and go into that house and find Petyr and....

He forces himself to take a deep breath. Sansa had asked him not to and so he won't. Petyr isn't his monster, he's Sansa's and Jon will let Sansa deal with it in her own way. He'd only help if she asked for it, but he knows she doesn't need him. Petyr Baelish had underestimated her.

“Here you are,” Arya's voice is surprisingly soft. Sansa sniffs and wipes at her eyes and Jon lifts himself off the floor to stand. “We finished mopping and bossypants wasn't around to give us more to do.” There's no malice in her words and Sansa laughs as she stands up and Jon realizes he hasn't seen them truly fight all day and he figures that at some point in the past nine years, they've learned to get along. When they look at each other, there's an understanding that seems to pass between them that Jon isn't a part of.

* * *

Sansa makes them break for lunch and pulls out an insulated bag with sandwiches she'd bought at the cafe next to the hotel and some water bottles. They go out to the back garden though it's overgrown and wild and they flatten down a section of too tall grass and set up their things there. Rickon inhales his food and then gets up and starts kicking the soccer ball around and Arya and Sansa seem to be discussing how and when to get someone out to look at the electric and plumbing and Bran takes out his sketchbook.

“I saw your drawings,” Jon scoots a little closer and points at the book. “They're good.”

  
Bran gives him a look and tilts his head a bit. “I used to draw you, you know.” Jon _doesn't_ know and doesn't know what to say to that. Bran starts sketching and doesn't look at him. “I used to draw you coming to save us like you did when they died. We'd be in trouble and you'd show up at the last minute and rescue us. I'd draw it over and over again.”

Jon feels a lump form in his throat but he doesn't cry (he never cries, he didn't when he found the bodies and he hasn't since and he won't now). “I didn't rescue you,” Jon's voice comes out wavering and he clears it to try and get it back to normal. “That day, I didn't rescue you, I just found you.”

“We were terrified,” Bran says, still facing the sketchbook, “we hid in the closet for... it felt like days. Then you were there and you took us outside and you called the police and then they took you away. I know you came back a few times even though I only saw you the once. I remember hearing Sansa go outside one night, her graduation? I remember seeing you two out there from the window.” Jon feels like he can't breathe and he wonders if Sansa knows Bran saw them. He wonders what else Bran saw that night. “The way Sansa and Arya used to talk about you, I expected you'd come kicking down our door any second and whisk us away to some magical ranch in Montana.”

There's silence now, Rickon is further off kicking the soccer ball around, Sansa and Arya still talking together but he can't hear their words anymore. All he can do is stare at Bran's sketch of a man that looks suspiciously like him.

“I'm not a superhero.”

Bran gives a little laugh. “Yeah, I know. I'm not a kid anymore and somewhere along the way we did realize you weren't coming for us cause you were just a kid, too. We just had to learn to be brave on our own.”

He thinks of Sansa threatening Petyr with a knife, of Arya's fierce protectiveness, of Bran's calm observance, of Rickon's youthful innocence. “Sounds like you guys did a pretty good job of it.”

Bran looks up from his sketchpad and gives a smile and tilts the paper at him where he's added three more figures that even with the most basic outlines Jon can recognize. Two off to the side are Ned and Cat and the one standing next to Jon is clearly Robb wielding a baseball bat. “I think we had pretty good examples of it.”

* * *

They leave Winterfell after a few more hours of cleaning, just as the sun begins to set and they stop off at Cassel's Diner and the food is exactly the same as it was when he was a kid. At some point, Rodrick Cassel comes out and exclaims over the Stark's return to town and sends them out a dozen cider donuts and refuses to let them pay. He calls Beth out and she and Sansa hug and Jon vaguely remembers Beth was in Sansa's year.

It's all so mundane and familiar and he feels a strange disassociation, like he's hovering just slightly outside his own body and if it weren't for the searing pain in his left shoulder, he would almost start to question if the last nine years had actually happened. At one point, as the taste of cider donuts takes him so forcefully back to being fourteen years old, he has to look at his burned hand to remind himself that this isn't his real life.

Back at the hotel, Rickon takes the box of leftover donuts into his and Bran's room and Arya protests loudly while Sansa marches Jon into his room so she can check his bandages again. They're alone this time and now her hands linger, her fingers brushing over his skin as she unwraps the bandages, as she pretends to examine the bruise and the split skin. Her hands are cold and her touch is light and when a shiver runs down his spine, she meets his eye in the mirror and her face is set like she's challenging him to tell her to stop.

He should tell her to stop. She has a boyfriend and he _should_ care about that but he doesn't. What he cares about, why this shouldn't happen, is that he can't give her what she wants. She doesn't know him, she doesn't know what he is. He sweeps into her life every few years and disappears and he _knows_ how much she loves stories and he worries how romantic it must seem to her. She wants a version of him that doesn't exist, not really. He's not a hero, he's not some knight out of a fairytale.

He's a killer.

A killer with an eighth grade education and no knowledge of how the real world works. And she's a college student who's about to graduate, who's been taking care of her family for nine years, who threatened a man with a knife, who survived her parents and brother being killed. She's much, _much_ too good for him but she doesn't know it because she doesn't know the truth.

“Jon,” her voice is soft and she prods at his good shoulder. “What're you thinking?”

He's thinking about telling her, finally. Telling her where he's been. What he's done. But there's still a part of him that wants to protect her, to tuck her into bed and tell her that the monster in her closet doesn't exist. (Except, she's already met a monster and in Jon's experience, the human ones are always worse somehow.)

And then he thinks about the door.

He thinks about Ned's anger and Cat's fear.

He thinks about an uncle who disappeared in the far north, whispered about in hunter bars.

If he's right, if this thing came after the Starks for a reason, then isn't he putting her in danger by _not_ telling her? By letting her go into that house blind? Isn't that exactly what got Ned and Cat and Robb killed?

“Jon,” she says again, worry lacing her voice and he finally turns to look at her.

She's beautiful, even in the fluorescent light of the bathroom, even with a frown. She's beautiful and he loves her, he thinks. He's always loved her. He loves all the Starks, but it was always different with her; softer, somehow. Whenever he was with her, _he_ was softer. Even when they were just children, his love for her was different than it had been with Robb or Arya or Bran or Rickon. She made him feel things in a way no one else did (she _encouraged_ him to feel things when no one else did).

And now here she is, looking concerned over him, looking at him like he _means_ something and he has to tell her. He has to keep her safe - from that house, from whatever killed Ned and Cat and Robb, from _him_.

He sighs and takes her hand and leads her out into the room and sits her on the bed. He puts his shirt back on and sits in the desk chair, far enough away that she can't reach out and touch him. He doesn't know how to start, _where_ to start, he's not even sure how much he wants to tell her, but when he looks up at her, eyes wide and waiting on him, he realizes he's going to tell her everything.

And then he does.

* * *

The next morning finds him already awake as the sun rises.

He barely slept. His story had taken a while to tell, he'd watched Sansa get paler and paler as he told it. He gave her the basics. What he does, who Mormont is, the things that exist. He told her that he thinks Ned knew something, he thinks Cat knew something, he thinks something came for them specifically and he thinks they'll find answers behind that door.

Sansa had sat in silence and his voice had eventually faltered and his story trailed off and she could barely look at him. He'd been expecting it, but he still wasn't prepared for it somehow. He'd told her he was tired and practically shoved her out of his room and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, feeling sick to his stomach and wondering if the Starks would be gone in the morning.

None of them knock on his door and he drags himself out of bed and into the shower and lets the water hit the bruise on his shoulder. His back doesn't seem to be bleeding anymore, the swelling has even gone down a bit and he gets dressed and goes down to eat. He doesn't know if any of them will be up yet. He doesn't know if they're even still here.

When he gets down to the lobby, he freezes in his tracks at the sight of the four people sitting in the waiting area, looking out of place against the expensive antique chairs.

“Look who's awake,” Mormont grumbles. “Thought I taught you better than to sleep this late.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this chapter was a bit tough. I feel like I'm stalling because I don't know how I'm supposed to bring the two worlds together and even though I have a vague idea of what the ending will be, I have no idea how to get there. Basically, I was in a mood when I wrote this and I'm feeling fairly uninspired with it. Hopefully that didn't come across.
> 
> Anyway, I know this whole genre isn't everyone's cup of tea so if you've read to this point, thank you so much! The comments and kudos are really heartening and I appreciate each and every one, honestly.


	7. a heart of stone, a smoking gun

He manages to get them out of the hotel and into the cafe next door. When they get outside, he sees Sansa's SUV and Arya's Miata in the lot and a tangible relief floods through him and he goes back inside and slips a note under Arya and Sansa's door saying he has something he needs to do this morning.

When he gets to the cafe and sits at the table with the others, the first thing out of Jon's mouth is “how did you find me?”

Satin gives him a _look_ and says “Sam hacked the FBI once, I think he can figure out which hotel you're staying at in your tiny hometown.”

Of course, it was a dumb question but Jon feels _off_. They shouldn't be here. Not in Vermont, not with the Starks right next door.

“You didn't know we were coming?” Sam shoots Satin his own _look_ and Satin shrugs.

“I figured if I told him, he'd just argue and it'd be a whole _thing_ and I didn't want to deal with it.” He turns to Jon, “the drawings you sent, the runes are part of a protection spell but I need to see the whole thing to figure out how to undo it. And I can do that best if I can see it in person.”

Jon can only nod dumbly, his coffee sitting untouched in front of him. They want to go to Winterfell. He feels like he's tipping over the edge of something and he can't stop it. They're all watching him like they're waiting for some sort of reaction except he doesn't know how he's supposed to react, he doesn't know what they're waiting for.

“Sam isn't supposed to come on hunts anymore,” is what he says instead and he wraps his burned hand around his coffee mug; the heat is a dull sensation, the nerve endings barely work, but sometimes he likes to see if he can still feel something. “And Gilly is really not supposed to be here.”

“I've never been out of Montana!” Gilly enthuses around a mouthful of chocolate chip muffin.

“This isn't a hunt,” Sam says, face set. “This is _you._ ”

He doesn't know what to say to that. He doesn't know what to say to any of this. To them being here, to telling Sansa last night, to the idea of all of them going to Winterfell.

By the time they leave the cafe, Jon has a vague plan in his head. He'll tell the Starks he needs to go to Winterfell alone today. He doesn't think he'll have much trouble convincing Sansa of that, not with the way she'd reacted last night. She'll know he's going to deal with the door and he wonders if she'll tell him not to bother, if she'll tell him to go back to Montana and leave them alone for good.

They walk to the parking lot of the hotel where Mormont's Crown Vic is parked and Jon freezes when he sees Sansa and Arya standing by their cars, looking like they're having an argument. Arya sees him first and her face sets in a frown. (Did Sansa tell her?) His stomach drops at the notion, the small bit of coffee he managed to get down threatens to come back up.

Arya storms over to him and he can see his note clutched in her fist.

“You can't just write a note and _disappear,”_ she starts before seeming to realize his company. She looks at the others and frowns as Sansa slowly walks up behind her, also giving the four new arrivals a once over. “Who are they?”

Jon hesitates before finally saying “these are the people I stayed with in Montana.”

Satin smoothly steps in and makes introductions and Jon's glad for it. Sansa isn't looking at him, not really, and Arya still looks angry and he knows Mormont has no patience for any of this and he feels himself tipping over the edge.

When he comes back into the conversation, it's to Gilly saying “it's the size of a turnip. I haven't felt it move yet, but it's definitely in there,” as she holds a hand on her stomach, which has just started to show with the baby.

“Congratulations,” Sansa smiles but now it seems like she is actively avoiding looking at him. He should be thankful, it's what he wanted. He wanted her to realize how dangerous he is, he wanted her to run away from him but now that it's happening, there's a sort of numbness creeping through him.

“We're gonna look at some stuff at the house,” he says because he needs this interaction to end. “You guys go do something in town, ok?”

Arya gives him a look, but Sansa grabs Arya's arm and they walk back towards the hotel, seeming to argue again.

“Do they know about us?” Sam asks and Jon shakes his head.

“Just Sansa. I told her last night. I don't know if she told the others.”

As he says that, Sansa walks back over to them as Arya heads into the hotel. “Ok,” she says, stopping in front of them and he can feel the tension roll off her, “let's go.”

“Sans, you aren't coming,” he tries to argue and her eyes snap to his, finally.

“It's my house,” her voice is stubborn and he knows the look on her face, the slight tilt to her head, and he knows he's lost the argument before it even really starts. “You aren't going there without me.”

Gilly and Satin go in Sansa's SUV, both of them are excited about riding in something that isn't twenty years old and half broken down. Jon even hears Satin say something about finally being escorted around in the luxury he deserves. The drive out in Mormont's car is silent and tense and he realizes it's stemming from him but he can't help it.

They stop at a sporting goods store on the way and pick up a battery powered lantern so that no one will have to hold a flashlight while they're in the basement. When they finally pull up in front of Winterfell, Mormont lets out a low whistle and Sam's eyes are huge. As they get out of the car, he can see Gilly and Satin also admiring the house, Gilly enthusing over the ivy and the trees.

“It's so _green_ here,” she gushes. “Did you see the mountains!”

Jon can't help but laugh. There are mountains in Montana in the west, but not where they lived, all open plains and dusty roads and sky as far as the eye can see. Vermont is a different world.

As Sansa leads them inside, he can feel the eyes of the others on him and he wonders if they're trying to reconcile his childhood home, if they're trying to fit it to the Jon they know. She leads them to the back of the house, down the basement stairs, and Jon turns on the lantern and sets it near the door.

Both Satin and Sam immediately start studying the door and discussing the runes and the blood. Mormont goes over to the workbench off to the side and looks through the tools and Gilly excuses herself back upstairs because the smell of mold and mildew makes her nauseous.

Sansa still won't look at him, not really. He wants to tell her to go upstairs but he knows it'll be pointless so he doesn't bother. She watches Sam and Satin and he watches her.

What feels like hours later, Satin turns from the door and says “I think it's a blood spell.”

“What's that mean?” Sansa asks and Jon's thankful. He's never been good with magic but for some reason he doesn't want Sansa to know he has no idea what Satin's talking about.

Satin waves at the door. “The runes carved into the door are a protection spell, kinda basic, I think. And old, Sam thinks the door is older than the house.”

“Older than America,” Sam explains.

“This swirl thing is newer, it looks like...” Satin seems to hunt for the words, “like adding a deadbolt to your front door on top of the normal lock. A deadbolt that can only be opened with more blood.”

“Can you open the damn thing or not?” Mormont grumbles, leaning against the workbench.

“Yes and no,” Satin says and Jon can sense Mormont's frustration. “I'm pretty sure I can do the basic magic to open it, the problem is getting the right blood. Like a key to a lock.”

Jon is suddenly back in the offices of Varys and Mopatis, hearing the soft voice of Mr. Varys saying _Eddard Stark was very clear about that, that it had to go to a blood Stark, I'm sure you understand._

When he looks over at Sansa, she looks pale and he wonders if Mr. Varys told her the same thing, if she's making the same connection. Sam, Satin, and Mormont notice this and look at her, too. He watches her swallow and she wipes her hands on her shorts before speaking.

“So how do I do it?”

Satin shoots Jon a look, like he knows Jon wants to protest, like he knows Jon doesn't want him to do this. And he _does,_ he wants to protest, he doesn't want her to ever get hurt, but it's not his choice. This isn't his house, his family. He's just a Snow. He may have grown up here, he may be distantly related, generations back, but he knows deep down and instinctively that his blood won't work. She's a Stark and Winterfell is hers and its her body, if she wants to cut herself open for it, he can't stop her.

He watches Satin take things out of his bag, animal bones and jars of liquid and a silver knife and Sansa tries hard to put on a brave face.

“It's not too bad,” Satin beckons her over. “I do it all the time.” He holds up his hand, the ugly scar across his palm where he's cut himself open time and again for his magic. Beside him, Sam gives a reassuring smile and holds up his own palm, a faint scar where he'd once donated. Sansa looks around and Mormont holds up his and when she looks at Jon, he shows her his unburned hand, the faint scar she hadn't ever noticed (he'd done it once or twice, when Satin was worn down and losing blood would have made him weaker; they all had, they did what they needed for the team).

She seems reassured by this and walks over to where Satin's set up his things, a jumble of symbols and bowls of animal parts and liquids. He begins his spell and Jon can feel the crackle in the air of it. He hates magic; it's useful, he knows, but he hates it. He likes things he can just stick a knife into, something he can punch or set on fire. Even after all these years, magic is still foreign to him, still makes him feel like he wants to crawl out of his skin.

At some point Satin turns to Sansa and takes her hand gently in his and in one quick motion, cuts open her palm. She sucks in a breath but manages not to react or pull back and Satin leads her to the door and places her bloody hand on it and when she turns the handle, it opens.

The door swings open on silent hinges and they all brace themselves for something that never comes.

It's just a room, and Jon edges past Satin and Sansa and takes the lantern inside. It looks like a workshop, workbenches along the one side with a small stool, shelves along the others. There's a single lightbulb hanging from the ceiling that looks like it was installed a hundred years ago and the room itself is small and smells like earth and Jon thinks that whatever protection spell was on the door must have kept out moisture and dirt because there's no smell of mold in here and it's surprisingly clean.

What really catches his eye, though, are the weapons. He moves inside and sets the lantern down on the workbench and stares at the myriad of weapons hanging on the walls, swords and knives and bows and axes. Most appear to be made of iron and silver; hunter weapons.

There's noises behind him and the others pile into the room. Sam and Satin immediately go to a shelf of books while Mormont also seems to admire the weapons hanging around.

There's a sword and Jon takes it off the wall and it feels good in his hand. He learned how to use a sword, Mormont taught him, but it's not a skill he ever really uses. Swords are impractical, large and noticeable and hard to explain if a cop pulls you over and finds it. At least with a bow and arrow you can pretend you're going to hunt deer. Guns are normal to own in America and knives and axes are more easily hidden. Swords though...

He goes back into the main basement where there's more room and starts to swing the sword like he remembers Mormont teaching him. He swings and parries and doesn't notice anyone watching him until Sansa's voice cuts in.

  
“Enjoying yourself?”

She sounds amused and Jon immediately stops and turns back to her, where she's leaning against the doorframe to the room with a small smile.

“A sword is just an extension of your dick, of course he's having fun,” Satin calls out without looking up from the book he's reading and Sansa brings her uncut hand to cover her mouth but Jon can tell she's laughing and he suddenly feels stupid, like a little kid playing at being a knight. He pushes past her, back into the room and hangs the sword back on the wall and out of the corner of his eye he sees Sansa frowning but he can't look at her right now.

“You should put something on that,” he gestures at her cut hand, which is still bleeding and dripping onto the floor.

“I don't think we have any medical supplies here,” she looks down at her hand.

“Med bag's in the car,” Mormont says and Jon nods and heads upstairs and he can hear Sansa following him. Gilly's sitting in the kitchen with a ball of yarn, face set in concentration as she knits. She looks up at them and huffs.

“This is stupid, who _does_ this,” she waves her knitting at them in frustration and even Jon can tell that whatever she's made isn't right.

“I could teach you?” Sansa offers and Gilly gives her a smile but Jon's continuing through the front hall and outside and he hears Sansa run to catch up. Out at the car, med kit in hand, he manages to clean the cut and bind it as best he can and he tries to ignore the way she flinches in pain.

“I didn't mean you had to put the sword back,” she says uncertainly when he's done and packing the kit back in the car. “If you liked it...”

“Swords are impractical,” he says and slams the car trunk closed and starts to walk back to the house.

“Why are you being weird?”

He stops and turns to face her and she's got her feet set like she's preparing for a fight but he can see the hurt in her eyes.

“I'm not being weird.”

“Yes you are. You've barely talked to me all day and now you're being a... a _baby_ about the sword.”

He lets out a surprised laugh and that stops her short. “ _I'm_ not the one not talking, you haven't even been able to _look_ at me since last night.” He can feel his hands shaking and he clenches them into fists so she won't see it. She stares at him for a few minutes and he can't really read her expression and something in her finally seems to break.

“Oh, Jon, _no_ ,” she moves forward and he almost backs away from her but she reaches out with her good hand and grabs his arm. “I didn't mean...” she shakes her head, “it was a lot. You had just told me mom and dad _knew_ about this stuff and that _thing_ had killed them on purpose and...” her voice breaks a little and without thinking, he steps into her and curls his arm around her and pulls her to him and she buries her face into his neck. He hears her take a deep breath but she doesn't cry. “I'm sorry, it wasn't about you. Well,” she pulls back slightly and looks at his face, “a little about you. I feel like you didn't even tell me _half_ of what you went through.”

He shrugs. “More of the same, mostly. Different cities, different monsters, same outcome. And I don't know for sure that your parents knew, it was just a dream I had and the stuff I heard about Benjen and the door.”

“Well I think we can safely assume my family was involved in this, considering what's in the room.” He nods; any lingering doubts he had are completely gone and he's certain that Ned had known, that Cat had probably known, too, Ned probably told her when she married into the family. “I think I'm angry,” she says in a whisper. “He never told us and he got himself and mom and Robb killed.”

Jon sighs and doesn't try to argue with her. He understands her anger, he'd gone through a version of it when he first started to suspect, but he's also had more time to process it. He finds himself running his thumb along her jaw and she closes her eyes and turns her face into his hand.

“I think,” he says, “that if Ned knew something, he didn't know it would come for them. I don't think he was a hunter himself. He never went on trips and I don't think that door's been opened in a very long time. I think if anything, your Uncle Benjen carried on the family tradition and Ned probably wanted nothing to do with it.” Sansa seems to consider this. “And we were all kids, Robb and I were only fourteen, he may have been waiting until we were older to tell us. Fourteen is too young to bring kids into that world.”

At this she pulls back and looks angry again. “So you think fourteen is too young to know, but that's the age _you_ were when you started all this.”

He doesn't know how to respond to that and he suddenly remembers the cold looks Sansa had been shooting at Mormont all morning that he'd been trying not to notice. He doesn't know what to say or how to explain it. He can't tell Sansa that he thinks Mormont was looking for a family; that he was lonely, that he'd lost his son, that he'd been doing it alone for fifteen years and was so desensitized by that point that bringing a child into it didn't faze him. Jon can feel it himself sometimes, the cold detachment, the numbness. The only time he ever sees the horror of it is when he's with the Starks.

He's a coward because he doesn't say anything. He can't argue with her and he can't betray Mormont and so he says nothing at all. She seems to realize he's still got his arm around her, that she's still pulled against him, because she pushes away and suddenly won't meet his eyes again.

“We should go back inside, Gilly's probably wondering where you are.” She moves past him and Jon's confused by her statement. “When's she due?”

“Dunno, whenever a turnip turns into a baby, I guess,” Jon shrugs and Sansa looks at him with something like disappointment.

“You should know when your baby's due, Jon,” she murmurs and looks away from him again, quickening her stride up the front steps to the house and it takes a moment for it to click in his brain and he laughs.

She stops at the landing and turns to him with a frown and he can tell she's about to give him a lecture and he holds up his hands. “Not mine,” he can't keep the grin off his face and she opens her mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. “It's Sam's.”

“Oh.”

He gets to the landing and he keeps grinning at the way her entire face is flushing bright red. “We talked for hours last night, I think I would've told you if I was gonna have a kid.”

She looks at the ground and mumbles something and he shouldn't feel as relieved as he does, he shouldn't feel _anything,_ but she'd been jealous and the idea makes him lightheaded.

“I'm glad, I felt bad for...” she trails off and gestures at him and he knows she means for the way she touched him, the thing between them that he keeps trying to push away. He feels a sudden irrational anger at the idea that he would have hidden a girlfriend and a baby from her and he speaks before he can stop himself.

“But you don't feel bad about Henry?”

She looks confused for a second. “You mean Harry?”

“Whatever,” he shrugs and he can _hear_ the petulance in his voice.

“Harry and I broke up before I came up here. He's got a practice in Boston and when I told him I was planning on moving back here after graduation, he offered to come with me. To pick up his whole life and move here and...” she sighs and shrugs, looking out at the forest that surrounds Winterfell. “I realized I didn't want him to. So I broke up with him. I guess it was kind of sudden, he keeps calling me and I haven't exactly answered.”

“He a lawyer or something?” Jon asks to try and distract her from the relief that he's sure is written all over his face.

“Dentist.” He snorts a laugh and she looks at him and he can see the defensiveness in her eyes. “It's a good profession!”

“Didn't say it wasn't,” he shrugs and moves past her, making sure to brush against her as he goes and he's satisfied with the way she seems to shiver as he does. Even with his eighth grade education and lack of social skills, he's at least more interesting than a _dentist_.

They head back inside and down to the basement. Sam's holding an old leatherbound journal and he holds it up. “I think this might be interesting,” he says. “Mind if I take it back to the hotel to see if I can translate it?"

“Sure,” Sansa tilts her head to look at one of the pages. “What language is that?”

“Not sure,” Sam frowns, “but I think it's some sort of Nordic language. Looks old and runic. Where's your family from originally?”

She looks at Jon, “I don't know, really. Dad used to talk about the old country a lot but I never really thought to ask specifics. I know my mom's family was French.”

“I'll figure it out,” Sam gives her a smile.

Sam and the others decide to head back to the hotel and they leave, Gilly asking if they can stop off for ice cream on the way back.

He and Sansa stay downstairs in the room and he takes a better look at it. The weapons are old but well kept and he's drawn to a knife that's almost a short sword on the far wall. It has a white wolf carved into the handle and the blade itself looks like nothing Jon's ever seen before. At first he thinks it's steel, but when he takes it down off the wall, the light ripples across it in a way that makes him think there's some sort of magic to it. It feels perfect in his hands and he gives it a few test movements.

He turns to find Sansa watching him again and she gives him a small smile and says “anything in here you want, it's yours. Obviously.” He nods and hefts the knife again and the weight and balance of it makes it feel like it was _made_ for him. There's silence for a few moments before she brings up the topic he'd been hoping to avoid.

“Do we tell the others?”

He sighs. “I told you because if something really is after your family, I wanted you to know. I've been trying to keep you guys away from this stuff for so long...”

“I think they deserve to know.”

“Even Rickon? He's only fourteen.”

“So were you,” she points out and he can sense that argument still isn't over though he decides to brush past it for now.

“So we tell them,” he agrees.

He doesn't want to, but it feels inevitable; he's falling over the edge and he can't stop it. He has to tell the others, and soon he'll have to have the real argument with Sansa that he can feel brewing. He knows it's not about how young he was, not really. That's over, there's no changing it, but he knows that soon she's going to ask him to stop. She's going to ask him to come home and she's not going to let him be vague or ignore her like he has in the past.

And he knows he'll say no.

He can't stop, he can't come home, not with this _thing_ still out there. He can't stop when the Starks are still in danger.

He won't stop until he finds it and kills it or dies trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I did no research into magic in the Supernatural universe because I kinda needed it to just do what I wanted, so... don't come for me if it's completely wrong.
> 
> My hesitation with this fic is that when I started writing it, I didn't really think about all the lore and world building I'd have to do to make these two things fit together, and I'm trying to do it in a way that doesn't feel forced or rushed. Hopefully it works!
> 
> Also, apologies to any dentists.


	8. i can give you life, i can take it away

They should probably head back at some point, but they find themselves sitting at the workbench as Sansa pages through one of the books in fascination. There's only one stool, so Jon sits on that and Sansa has hopped up onto the bench itself and is sitting on the edge, legs swinging over the side.

The book she's got is in the same runic language that the journal had been, but there's illustrations in it, monsters and ghosts and demons. He explains them to her each time she points at a new monster, and each time she asks if he's fought one of them. Every time he says yes, she seems sad and he thinks they should stop this and go back home. He doesn't want her to be sad, not for him or what his life is.

“You must have thought I was so stupid,” she says at one point, after he's finished explaining what a hellhound is. “There I was telling you I threatened Petyr with that knife and you fight stuff like _this._ ”

She's staring down at the book and not looking at him and he stands from the stool and moves in front of her. That makes her look up, eyes widening a bit as he steps in closer and she parts her legs to let him.

“Never stupid,” he murmurs and brings his hands up to cup her jaw, to make sure she doesn't look away from him and he keeps his eyes locked on hers. “I was so proud of you.” Her lips part as she takes a shaky breath and he wants nothing more than to kiss her but he doesn't.

“I probably wouldn't have been able to go through with it,” she forces out a laugh and Jon frowns. “I'm not that brave. I don't even think I'd know how to use the knife, really.”

He could explain the different types of bravery, of all the ways she is, that it's not just killing and fighting, it's not just throwing yourself in harms way. True bravery is a subtle thing, quiet and often overlooked. His kind of bravery is louder and it walks a fine line with stupidity. It often looks like a death wish.

“I could teach you,” is what he says instead and when she looks confused, he reaches over and takes one of the smaller knives off the wall. He steps back from her and flips the knife around in his hands, the handle facing towards her as he holds the blade. She hesitates for a moment, eyes flitting between the knife and his face before she reaches out and takes it.

Her grip is wrong, he knows immediately, any force and it would drop out of her hand. He backs out of the room and she slides off the workbench and follows him out into the main basement, where there's more open space. They've left the lantern in the room but there's enough light to see between that and the sunlight filtering through the small windows.

The first thing he does is adjust her grip and then the position of her feet. “Alright,” he says once he's satisfied, “if you needed to kill me, where would you aim?”

She hesitates and her eyes scan over him and she says “the heart?” It's a question, she's unsure, and he watches her grip shift back into the wrong position. He shakes his head and takes her hand and repositions it.

“I know it feels wrong, but keep it like this.” Then he steps back slightly, and lifts her hand and positions the knife at his heart. Her eyes go wide and she tries to pull back, but he keeps her hand in his, keeps the tip of the knife over his heart. “The heart would kill me, but it's not the best option. You'd have to make sure your aim was right and there's a lot of muscle and bone protecting it.” He moves her hand down to his stomach. “The stomach is weaker, no ribs to protect it, but it's usually a slower death. If you're being attacked, you want them to die quickly. Stomach is slow and painful. If you do go for that, remember to twist the knife, it does more damage.”

He watches her swallow and her face is pale and he wonders if he should stop. When he's silent for a few seconds, she looks up and she must see the question there because she nods for him to continue.

“What you want to aim for are the major arteries.” He still has his fingers wrapped around her wrist and he lifts it to the side of his neck and shifts her hold until the edge of the knife is pressed into his skin. Again, she tries to pull back, but he makes her keep pressure. “Carotid,” he explains, “one on either side. Minimal force needed.” He brings her hand down to his groin and she tries to pull back again on instinct, but he brings the knife to his leg and holds it there. “If you can't get your hand to the neck, go for the femoral artery. The higher up the better.”

He waits until she nods and he lets go of her wrist and she immediately jerks back. Her hands are shaking and he reaches forward and gently takes the knife from her.

“I don't think I could do it,” she whispers.

“If something is after you,” he says slowly and evenly, “if its you or them, make sure it's you. _You_ stay alive.”

“I don't think I'm strong enough to.” She looks down at her bandaged hand where blood is starting to seep through.

“There's no weakness in not being a killer,” he says. He wants to tell her that there's a sort of strength in remaining kind, in caring about people. The kind of strength that Sam has, that Satin has, that Gilly has. Not warriors, not killers, but strong all the same. He can't get the words out, though, he's never able to say what he really means.

He walks past her and goes to hang the knife back on the wall in the room. He gets the lantern and shuts the door behind him and she follows him upstairs. In the kitchen, the sunlight is near blinding after being in the basement for so long.

“I hate it,” she says as she picks up the keys from the counter.

“Most likely you'll never have to use it...”

“No,” she interrupts. “I hate that _you_ do it.”

Jon feels his heart stutter for a moment. The argument is happening sooner than he expected and he's not prepared (not that he thinks he'd be prepared even if he had warning).

“Sans, I have to. There's something out there that came for your family before and I won't let it again.”

She looks at him and he's surprised by the expression on her face. There's no stubborn tilt to her head, no set to her jaw. She's not _fighting_ him.

They stand in silence for a moment. “If you find this thing,” she whispers, “if you kill it, will you stop?”

His breath catches in his throat as she stares at him, eyes wide as she seems to waver between hope and fear.

“If I kill it,” he finds himself saying, almost against his will, “if I'm sure it's dead and nothing will ever come for you again, then I'll stop.”

“You'll come home?”

“Yeah, I'll come home.”

* * *

It wasn't a lie, he tells himself.

He promised to stop once he was sure they'd never be in danger again and he knows he'll never think they're truly safe, not when he knows what's out there. It wasn't a _lie_ , just a way to avoid the issue until the next time she brings it up.

He drives them back to the hotel because of her hand and he tries to ignore the way his shoulder throbs. He'd ignored it all day with everything that went on, but he regrets swinging that sword around now. In the silence of the car, it's all he can think about.

Arya, Bran, and Rickon are out and Sansa calls them to get them back. They end up bringing food, but Jon can't eat and it seems like Sansa can't either.

“What happened to your hand?” Arya asks through a mouthful of burger and Sansa looks at him.

It was hard enough to tell Sansa, he's not sure he can do it again. Sansa seems to sense this because she comes to sit next to him and she takes his hand and he begins.

* * *

He's not sure how he expected them to react, but it wasn't this. It wasn't Arya's silence or Rickon's excitement or Bran's fascination. Maybe he should have expected it, though.

Rickon's still a kid, Jon can understand. Jon was that age when he found out, he remembers feeling invincible and powerful and like he'd been let on to a secret that no one else knew. Jon remembers feeling _special_.

Bran's fascination seems to stem more towards the lore of it, to the monsters themselves and where they come from and Jon can't answer his questions. Jon's never really paid too much attention to the meaning behind it all. Jon's job is to stab and kill things, not understand why.

Arya's silence, though, he can't figure that out. He thought maybe she'd be excited like Rickon. He even entertained that she'd demand to come along and fight with him. Ten year old Arya absolutely would have. Ten year old Arya was fierce and reckless (like fourteen year old Jon had been, he thinks). But Arya is nineteen now and she's always been smarter than him and he thinks maybe she, like Sansa, understands the weight of it a bit more.

* * *

He feels uneasy with the way they all slot together. Over the next week, they spend time at Winterfell and Rickon asks Mormont a thousand questions and Bran does the same with Sam and Satin. Sansa teaches Gilly how to knit and he finds himself with Arya often.

She remains silent, mostly, contemplative. She looks at him differently now and he doesn't know how to feel about that. She'd always been his little shadow, looking up to him and he'd always felt like a sort of hero in her eyes, even when he knew he wasn't. Now though, now he thinks he almost sees anger and he _hates_ it.

* * *

Mormont gets restless easily, Jon can understand the feeling. But while Sam works to translate the journal, Mormont starts grumbling more and more.

“Montreal's not that far away,” Satin says with a waggle of his eyebrows.

The three of them had figured out a few years ago that Mormont's _friend_ in Montreal was a woman, though he'd never admit it. It takes a bit of cajoling, but eventually Mormont takes the Crown Vic and heads up.

* * *

By mid August they've settled into a routine and it's unnerving. They've managed to get the electric working and a plumber has been out to check the pipes. The main line is alright, with only a few issues and the water heater needs replacing, but otherwise they have running water, too. They move into the house, Sam and Gilly take one of the larger guest room and Satin's is on the same floor. The Starks settle into their respective rooms and try to ignore the master bedroom and Robb's.

Sam painstakingly translates the journal and Satin tries to study the wolf handle knife that Jon found and the Starks slowly clean the house, unwrapping it and it bringing it back to life.

Jon's shoulder heals slowly and he refuses Rickon's requests to teach him how to fight. Rickon's insistent and Jon isn't surprised when Sansa overhears and tells him no, but he is a little surprised when Arya also puts her foot down.

He hasn't been on a hunt in over a month and it feels strange. It feels strange to be in one place for this amount of time, to not be killing and fighting, to not be sleeping on hard mattresses with suspect bedding and eating most of his meals out of a vending machine.

He hates how much he likes it.

He likes waking up in the morning, earlier than everyone else and making a cup of coffee and going to sit out in the backyard, still overgrown and untamed. He likes watching the sun rise over the trees. He's not used to early mornings; they fight mostly at night and he's usually asleep until the checkout time of whatever motel they're in that day.

His favorite part of the day, though, is when Sansa joins him with her own cup of coffee and they sit in the wild grass and don't really talk.

It's on one of these mornings that she reminds him that this isn't his life, not really.

“I've got to get Rickon back to Boston,” she says lowly, staring out at the treeline. “And freshman orientation will be starting soon for Bran.” She doesn't mention that her own school will be starting, that Arya has a job to get back to.

“I guess we should head back to Montana.”

He doesn't want to, he realizes with absolute horror. He doesn't want to go back to dusty Montana with it's wide open plains and it's endless sky. Being back here, it's like Vermont is in his blood. _Winterfell_ is in his blood.

“You could stay.”

Her voice is soft and cautious, like she's talking to an easily spooked animal and he supposes she has every right to think that. Every time they've talked about him staying in the past, he'd run. But this time, the itch to leave them, to get away from them to keep them safe, it's not as deep. Maybe because he knows that they were already involved from the moment they were born with Stark blood in their veins. Maybe because he's been around them too long and they've wormed their way beneath his skin.

When he doesn't react, she continues. “Sam is still translating that journal and he seemed interested in the other books. Gilly loves it here, she's always talking about the trees and the mountains. And you said Mormont seemed to be in a good mood in Montreal?”

There's an unspoken understanding that Mormont stays in Montreal. Mormont seems to be aware that Sansa isn't his biggest fan and it's not something they've talked about, but he's keeping his distance.

“There should be a Stark in Winterfell,” he says with a slight tilt of his lips but she refuses to laugh at his joke. The idea of him and Sam and Gilly and Satin living here while the Starks are in Boston and Rhode Island seems wrong.

“You _are_ a Stark,” she says. “You're family.” She looks down and takes his burned hand in hers and he can feel the healing cut across her palm, scarred over and still an ugly red. “I know I've been pushy,” she won't look at him and her voice is still soft, “I know you don't feel... but you're still family. You still belong here.”

There's a feeling that rises from deep in his chest and he turns to her, to her lowered eyes and soft frown and he reaches up with his other hand and and cups her jaw and brings his forehead to hers and squeezes his eyes shut.

“I feel,” he starts but he can't continue it. He's never been good with words, with feelings, and things like _love_ and _comfort_ and _home_ have been out of his vocabulary for so long he's not even sure he knows what they are anymore. He can't formulate anything else so he says again, _I feel_.

She tips her head up and kisses him, not the careful, delicate thing they'd shared all those years ago in Boston. This is desperate and messy and he tastes salt and he knows she's crying. For what, he's not sure. Because she's leaving, maybe. Because they both know this is the end. Because they know that once Sam has finished translating that journal, once he has a line on what this thing is and where it is, Jon will be gone and he probably won't come back.

Her hair is silk in his hand, her lips are soft beneath his, _she's_ soft beneath him and he thinks again of the strength there is in softness, of the steel in her spine and the kindness of her heart and he loves her (he's always loved her).

The sounds of the house waking up pulls them apart and she wipes at her eyes and her lips and takes deep breaths to calm down and he lays back in the grass for a moment to collect himself. From the house's open windows they can hear Rickon and Arya shouting and the clank of dishes in the kitchen and when they're ready, they get up and head back inside.

* * *

That night she comes to his room and slips inside without knocking and he somehow knew she would, had somehow been waiting for it.

They're nearly silent as she stands next to his bed and strips her pajamas off and when he sits up, she tugs his shirt off and then makes him lay back down to pull his sweatpants down his legs. He doesn't fight it, he can't fight it, it feels like this is inevitable, like this has been building for years.

His childhood bed is small and squeaky from years of disuse and she keeps her movements light as she climbs on and swings her leg over his hips, as she sinks down on him. Every movement makes the bed creak and every breathy sigh she gives sounds overly loud in the darkness but he can't bring himself to care. He loses himself in her, in the feeling of her skin beneath his hands, of her fingers gripping his shoulders, the smell of her hair as it falls around them, the heat of her, the sharp cry she makes when he brings his hand between her legs. It feels surreal, a crackling in the air like magic, he wants to stay here forever. In Winterfell, in _her_.

  
She comes silently with an arch of her back and a shuddering breath and he follows her over (he'd follow her anywhere).

* * *

The next morning they pack up the cars.

Arya's Miata was a rental that she returns with a sigh. Jon is somehow convinced to come with them to Boston, Arya begging to drive the Chevelle for at least part of the three hour trip and he hands her the keys and for the first time in weeks it feels normal between them.

Sansa drives Bran and Rickon, and before they get into the car Sam asks if she's sure he and Gilly and Satin can stay in the house. She tells them that of course they can and she and Gilly hug goodbye and Jon thinks that Gilly has never really had a girlfriend before. She's had sisters and she has Sam and she has Jon and Satin, but that's it. She's almost in tears as the Starks leave, though she blames it on her hormones.

They stop for lunch in Concord and Bran jokes that they should detour to Salem and Arya throws a fry at him.

When they get to their aunt's house, Jon doesn't ask if he should come in or not. He knows he shouldn't, but he doesn't care. He helps them with their bags and when Lysa sees him, she looks like she's seen a ghost and he feels a sort of sick pleasure at this. Petyr stands in a doorway and watches them with a blank expression and Jon can feel his hands itch with the the desire to kill him. Or, at the very least, break his nose.

He's walked away from the Starks before, but it's different now. This feels like the end of something and he knows he's not the only one who feels it. They all know what he's going to do once Sam finishes the journal. They don't talk about it, they don't acknowledge it, the fact that he's likely going to die. Benjen Stark had, Jon thinks. Ned and Cat and Robb had. But he made a vow long ago, to kill what killed the Starks or die trying and he means to keep it.

When it's time for him to leave, Sansa kisses him in the entryway and if Arya and Bran and Rickon are surprised, they don't show it. When he pulls back and glances up, Lysa looks like she's about to choke on her own fear and Petyr also seems paler somehow. Jon makes sure to meet Petyr's eyes, keeps their gazes locked even as he says goodbye to Sansa.

The drive back to Winterfell is too quiet. He's grown used to having the Starks around, to their constant noise and chatter. He'll have to get used to the silence again.

* * *

It's a week later when Sam finds him in Ned's old study and sets the journal and a notebook down on the desk and says he's finished the translation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaand we're off to lore town next. Send prayers for my sanity. Btw I appreciate all of your comments so much and the theories are giving me life. Most of you aren't super far off, damn you.
> 
> Also, I guess I should say come follow me or talk to me on tumblr if you want? I'm trying to be better at it
> 
> https://cellsshapedlikestars.tumblr.com/


	9. turning away from the light

The translation itself was easy, Sam tells him, once he figured out the language. What was harder, what took the most time, was figuring out fact from fiction.

The journal is barely that, more a story, a secondhand telling of beings called the Others. Jon remembers this legend, remembers Sam bringing it up years ago, remembers dismissing it because it had been filled with nonsense. But now, finding it in the Stark's house, he's forced to pay attention.

Sam tells him the legend of thirteen beings called the Others who came from the frozen north and rode ice spiders and could bring the dead back to life and wanted only to destroy anything living, anything with warmth. Sam looks frazzled as he sifts through papers, an entire notebook worth of notes.

“I don't think the ice spiders are real,” Sam explains. “Probably an exaggeration, spiders are such a base fear, right? Make them bigger and add ice and they're a substitute for horses. And the dead thing, well, even witches can make zombies, so it's not out of the realm of possibility. I don't think it's like in this legend where they raised _armies_ of them. Most likely it'd take a spell and some sort of anchor, so probably only one at a time.”

He takes a deep breath and shifts to a different page. “They can only be harmed by two things, dragon steel and dragon glass.”

“Wait, _dragons_ ,” Jon interrupts.

“Well,” Sam grins, “I don't think dragons actually exist. There'd be evidence of them, you know? I think it's just another metaphor, another layer of fantasy on top of reality. I've done some reading in another book, one on weapons, and I _think_ dragon glass is just obsidian. And I think, if I'm reading it right, dragon steel is steel forged with some sort of magic. The dragon glass can harm them but only dragon steel can kill them.”

Jon feels his heart skip a beat and he pulls the wolf knife out of it's sheath that he keeps on his hip now, for reasons he hasn't been able to figure out except that it _feels_ right. When he places it on the table, Sam nods.

“The main legend here is that there are thirteen Others, so thirteen dragon steel weapons were forged and given to thirteen warriors. There's a pretty detailed description of the weapons I won't get into, but I believe that,” he points at the wolf knife, “is _langklo_. Or, in English, Longclaw.”

“Ok, so the weapons were real,” Jon says, “does that mean the thirteen warriors were?”

“Probably,” Sam shrugs. “Although doesn't it seem a little stupid to send thirteen against thirteen when you could send thirty? Or three hundred? I'm fairly certain they were only able to make thirteen steel weapons but who know how many people they sent with obsidian. But thirteen warriors sounds a lot better for a story.”

Jon nods and picks up _langklo_ and it feels right in his hand, as always. Like it was made for him, not like it was forged a thousand years ago for a different person.

“Now, here's where it gets real messy and I think it's harder to separate out what actually happened versus what makes a good story. Of the thirteen warriors, only one came back alive, barely. It's said he only spoke once about what happened and then never again for the rest of his life. They went out to find thirteen Others and only found twelve. After a long battle, they killed the twelve and this last man was the only survivor.”

When Jon looks at the paper, he can see in Sam's neat writing _Brandon Stark_.

“Ok,” Jon says slowly. “So they missed one. And it's, what, showing up a thousand years later for revenge? Why now? Why come to Winterfell? How did it find Winterfell at all?”

“I've got some theories,” Sam's excited now, shuffling through his papers until he finds the right one. “Ok, so I thought too, why now? And if all this went down back in Europe, how did the Other find the Starks _here_? My first theory is the door. Remember how I said it was older than Winterfell? I think that door was in another place, guarding the same things and when the Starks came over, they brought it with them, ancient and powerful magic that was probably easier to transfer than to make a whole new one. Maybe this Other could sense the magic? Or, I remember you mentioning Benjen Stark and how he died up in Canada and I was thinking, what if he got it in his head to seek this thing out, went looking for it, found it, and brought this thing's attention back to the Starks?”

“If Benjen was going after it, why wouldn't he take _langklo_?” Jon asks, rubbing his hands over his face. He feels a headache forming. The _why_ of it all was never something he worried about and now, thinking of all the possibilities leaves him spinning.

“Probably didn't know,” Sam frowns. “Look how long it took me to translate this. No offense, but most hunters aren't exactly going to sit down and translate a journal and a book on weapons. You guys aren't really known for your patience.”

He won't argue with that. If Jon had any idea what the Others were, if he had even the most basic idea of where to find them, he absolutely would have gone off half cocked and with no real planning. And if Ned knew about it, then likely that meant he and Benjen grew up hearing stories of their family, of the Others. Jon can picture so clearly a young Benjen deciding to hunt down the last of the family's great enemy.

“Ok,” Jon says slowly. “So we go with the idea that Benjen went north to find it, found it, got himself killed, and the Other followed his trail back to Winterfell?”

“Possibly. Maybe looking to kill any and all Starks?”

“Except he didn't,” Jon reasons. “The four of them were right upstairs. It only got Robb because he came downstairs to see what was going on. If it wanted the Starks, if it could _sense_ them or something, it would have found them.”

“Maybe it didn't want the Starks,” Sam frowns and shifts back to the paper with the description of the dragon steel weapons. “Maybe it wanted to get it's hands on the last remaining thing that could kill it. Except it found a door locked with blood magic and couldn't get in.”

Jon sits back in Ned's desk chair and brings a hand up to rub at his beard. There's a thousand possibilities, a thousand variations of this, but when he thinks about it, none of it matters, really. What matters is that they'll never truly know and because of that, there's no way to know if this thing will ever come for them again or not. And that's the end of it, he has to kill it. He won't risk this thing coming for the Starks again, in a year, in ten years, their children or grandchildren.

He'll kill it or die trying.

* * *

The worst part is the waiting.

Sam thinks the Other is only active in the winter and Jon needs his shoulder to fully heal, anyway. The sitting around Winterfell, thinking about it, that's the worst part. Spending his nights awake, trying not to think about it, trying not to think about _her_ , trying not to think of how he may never see her or any of the Starks again.

Sansa told him they're all coming home for Christmas and Jon plans to be long gone by then.

* * *

He never finds out which of them tells Mormont his plans, but Mormont shows up in Winterfell with his bags packed and ready to go north. Sam, Satin, and Gilly feign innocence, so he decides they're all traitors.

“So, up to northern Canada, huh?” Mormont says. “And this thing was in Scandanavia before? Does it live in the North Pole or some shit?”

“Yeah, him and Santa are pals,” Satin drawls.

“Maybe it _is_ Santa,” Gilly suggests.

“You're going to kill _Santa_?” Sam asks in mock horror.

They all laugh and Jon feels a bit of the tension leave him, until Sam asks about their transportation. _Their_.

“You're not coming,” he says, the smile slipping from his face.

“We can't let you go alone,” Sam tries and Jon immediately stands from the couch.

“You're _not coming_ ,” he repeats, slower, and the tension is back and worse than before.

“We can help,” Satin starts, but Jon cuts him off.

“How. How are you going to help?” Sam and Satin look taken aback by his tone, but he doesn't care. “Sam already said the only thing that can kill it is this knife and there's only one of those. You two will just get in my way.”

“We-” Satin tries again, but Jon refuses to listen to this.

“You're going to go back to Montana,” he decides suddenly. “There's no reason for you to stay here, there's nothing else for you to do.”  
  
Sam stands and there's a silence that stretches between them, a new hostility that's never been there before.

“I know we aren't _hunters_ ,” Sam says quietly. “I know we can't fight like you. And you're right, we probably would get in the way. But you don't have to be a dick about it.” He holds out his hand and Gilly takes it and shoots Jon a tentative look before she stands and follows Sam out of the room.

Satin stands up, too, and gives Jon a cool look, but underneath, he can see something deeper, a hurt he's trying to cover up. “Got it,” he says, “we've outstayed our usefulness.”

And then he's gone, too, and Jon is left with Mormont and a nagging guilt that he tries to push away. He looks at Mormont and prepares for a fight and Mormont holds up his hands. “Won't work on me, kid. Ain't nothin' you can say that'll hurt my feelings.”

For a moment Jon wants to spit something like _you're not my father_ but he doesn't. He knows what he's doing, how he's pushing them away like he's been doing with the Starks for years. To protect them, to keep them safe from him and his vendetta.

“If I die,” Jon says slowly, “if I fail, I need you to promise me that you'll protect them. All of them. Keep the Starks out of this house. Burn it to the ground if you have to. Make sure this thing never finds them.”

Mormont contemplates this for a moment. “You should probably ask Sam and Satin to do that, cause I'm comin' with you. I brought you into this mess, I'll be with you at the end.”

* * *

He tries to leave in the night.

He slips out of bed and makes his way down and packs his things into the Chevelle. He's almost done when he hears a crunch of footsteps in the gravel behind him and turns to find Mormont, dressed and with a bag slung over his shoulder.

Mormont is silent as he throws his bag into the trunk next to Jon's and then takes the keys from Jon's hand and gets into the driver's seat. Jon gets in and when the Chevelle starts, he's sure the noise will wake the house, but they'll be gone by the time the others even make it out of bed.

* * *

They stop in Montreal.

Mormont won't _say_ its because he wants to say goodbye to his friend, to the woman he's never introduced Jon to and likely will never get a chance to. While Mormont is gone, Jon takes the Stark phone out of his bag and turns it on and dials the number she wrote on a piece of paper, her cell number.

It's almost midnight, but she answers with a bleary _hello_.

It was a mistake to call, he thinks. Hearing her voice makes him want to turn around and drive the hours and miles to Boston, to leave all this behind and go to where she is and crawl under the covers with her. When he doesn't answer, he hears her take a sharp breath and she whispers “Jon?”

He doesn't realize he's holding his breath until he has to release it and it shudders out of him in an exhale. She doesn't say anything else and he stays on the line with her, listening to her breathe, until it evens out and he's certain she's fallen back asleep. It's only then that he says his goodbyes and hangs up.

* * *

“You should stay here,” Jon tells Mormont when he gets back to the motel. Whatever happened between Mormont and the woman, it looks like it took years off his life. “You deserve a retirement. Stay here, stay with her. There's only the one weapon, you won't even be able to help.”

Jon knows his arguments will fall on deaf ears. Mormont is a stubborn old bear, and he's already lost a son. Jon knows, deep down, that Mormont will never let him go alone, that nothing Jon can say will dissuade him. It would be the same for Sam and Satin, he knows. They're Mormont's family, his adopted children, even if Mormont would never admit to it.

But Jon also knows that Mormont will distract him. He's the closest thing to a father that Jon has now and having him there is only going to make him lose focus. Mormont was right, all those years ago. _Something wants to get to you, they can go for the people you love. Keep those people to a minimum. In fact, try to not to love anyone at all_.

Mormont had broken his own rule, but Jon had, too.

* * *

The next morning, Mormont still refuses to stay in Montreal.

With a frantically beating heart, Jon nods. Mormont sits on the edge of the hotel bed and puts his boots on and Jon kneels down next to him and pretends to tie his own boots. He lets the small, thin knife he'd hidden up his sleeve slip out into his hand and before Mormont can react, Jon stabs it through the top of Mormont's boot, through his foot, and into the floor below.

Mormont cries out and kicks Jon in the chest with his other foot and Jon falls back and scrambles away. The look in Mormont's eyes is confusion for only half a moment before realization hits and anger takes over.

They stare at each other, Jon's heart slamming against his ribs, and he pulls a phone out of his pocket and dials an ambulance. When the call is over, he takes his bag and leaves the motel.

* * *

His hands are shaking so hard he can barely drive.

Mormont will be ok. He knows his aim is good, that he avoided any major veins or nerves and the emergency service will get him to a hospital quickly.

It had to be done, he tells himself. Mormont can't follow him with an injured foot.

In Ontario, he switches the Chevelle out for a Land Rover and makes his way further north.

He knows Mormont will be furious, but it's better than being dead.

* * *

The further north he goes, the colder it gets.

Jon remembers Vermont winters, they're nothing like this. No matter the number of rest stops he stays at or the hot meals he eats, nothing gets him warm. At night, he tosses and turns and shivers until finally falling into a restless sleep and when he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter than normal, this is more of a lore dump/transition chapter, sorry!
> 
> I decided to keep the whole legend kinda vague because it felt more realistic that something that old would be steeped in layers of retelling and exaggeration, but hopefully it paints enough of a picture.


	10. like eating glass

He gets to a logging camp on King William Island, the last place Benjen Stark was seen alive (or dead).

There's a bar that reminds him oddly of Ygritte's bar, except for the massive fireplace in the center. It's full of gruff men who look like they'd rather drink than talk. And just like a hunter bar, a new face turns heads, most of the men watching him over the rims of their cups and he ignores them and heads to the bar.

The man behind the bar agrees to rent him a room for at least the night, though he warns it's little more than a cot in a closet. Jon doesn't mind, he's slept in worse.

He's just starting his bowl of stew (he doesn't ask what's in it) when a woman comes and sits next to him at the bar. He's surprised, to say the least – not to find a woman here, but to find a woman dressed like _her_ here. She looks like she just stepped out of a film noir, silky red dress that's too thin for this weather, her hair sleek and dyed blood red. When he glances over at her, spoon in mouth, she gives a half smile and holds out her hand. “Melisandre,” she says smoothly, her voice deep and rich and it sends an unpleasant shiver down Jon's spine.

When he's finished swallowing, he shakes her hand and says “Jon” because he's not sure what else to do.

She's out of place here, and the men around the bar watch her with a mixture of awe, suspicion and fear.

“It's nice to meet another new arrival,” she says and the way she stares at him makes him feel like she's reaching into his chest and tearing him open. “I only just got here myself.”

He nods. He isn't sure what to make of her or what to say to her and so he doesn't say anything and goes back to eating and she watches him while he tries to ignore it.

“Would you like me to tell you your fortune?” she asks and that makes him look back at her. She slides a deck of tarot cards from the wide sleeve of her dress and places them on the bar in front of him and he watches the bartender eye them warily.

“Don't put much stock in fortunes,” he tells her. “Future is what it is.”

“Not always,” she murmurs and her hand slides down his arm and even through the layers of his clothes her touch feels like it burns. “The cards told me to come here, I think you're what I'm looking for.”

He doesn't like her tone or the look she's giving him. He senses it, the crackle of magic around her. Not the sharp burst of a spell but the dull static of something that _is_ magic. He's met a medium before and he remembers feeling the same thing.

Her hand slides down his arm until it reaches his burned hand, set palm down on the bar, and she lifts it and places it on her deck and makes him draw a card. When she flips it over, she smiles.  
  
“The moon,” she breathes as he tugs his hand out of her grip (he _hates_ non consensual magic). On the card, a wolf and a dog howl at the moon and he thinks, for a moment, that the wolf looks exactly like _langklo_. “Fear, uncertainty,” her voice is low and musical and her lips are curled up into what would be a smile if it reached her eyes at all.

He expected something like _death_ and he decides he hates this one more. He's not _uncertain,_ he knows what he's doing.

When she tries to take his hand again, he pulls it away from her and feels an animal sort of growl tear itself from his throat. It only serves to make her smile and she brings her hand up his arm again. “You're all alone,” she observes.

“I'd like to keep it that way,” he shifts away from her again, making her hand drop from his shoulder.

Another knowing smile lifts the corners of her mouth and she takes her deck and slides it back into her sleeve before she stands. She's about to move away when she leans in and whispers in his ear _the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives._

The words hit him like a punch to the gut and he's wrenched back to Winterfell, to Ned sitting him and Robb down after a fight and explaining that family sticks together. _The lone wolf dies_.

By the time he gets himself together, she's walked out of the bar and he tries to calm his shaking hands and he stares at his bowl of half eaten stew and has no appetite anymore.

A mug of some sort of alcohol is pushed into his field of vision and he looks up to see a giant man with a wild bushy red beard sit on the stool the woman had vacated.

“Don't worry,” he says in a thick accent Jon can't place, “she makes everyone tremble like a baby lamb.” With that he laughs, loud and boisterous and a few of the other men within earshot laugh along. “She's been here two weeks and she's got us all lookin' over our shoulders.”

Jon drinks – it's not beer, it's disgusting but he can taste the alcohol and after that encounter, he needs it.

He and the giant man, who introduces himself as Tormund, sit in companionable silence for a while before Jon gets up the courage to ask what he'd been meaning to ask the locals since he got here.

“I'm looking for someone,” he says casually, swirling the liquid in the mug. “Benjen Stark.”

A record scratch wouldn't have gone amiss with the way the men within earshot go deathly silent, and soon it ripples out through the rest of the bar. Tormund looks at him, his originally jovial expression turned into something more serious and appraising.

“Might've heard the name,” Tormund says warily.

“We're related,” Jon says and it's not a lie, technically. Ned had told him that the Starks and the Snows had some common ancestor. He decides to go all in when he sees the grim expression on Tormund's face. “Heard some rumors he was last seen here alive. And then not so alive.”

Tormund rubs at his beard and leans heavily against the bar. “That was before my time, a couple decades ago, but we all hear the talk. Some rumor of a man named Benjen Stark goin' out in the wilderness and comin' back.... not so alive.”

“Anyone seen him recently?” Jon asks and if his question surprises Tormund, it doesn't show.

“There's always rumors. Somethin' goes missing in camp, somethin' breaks, some sort of accident - well, that's Benjen Stark.” It sounds like the boogey man and Jon lets out a snort of a laugh and Tormund gives him a smile. “What _isn't_ rumor,” Tormund's face is serious again, “are the men that go missing.”

“Missing?”

“Men from our camp, from the fishing camps. One minute they're around, the next they're gone. Vanished. Always in winter, always in a snow storm. Doesn't happen to the local Inuit tribes from what I know. They talk about a monster in the ice and I guess they know how to not let it get them. They're always warnin' us, maybe we should listen to them, huh?” There's a rueful smile under the big red beard and he downs his own drink in one go. When he finishes, he sets the mug down on the bar and turns to Jon and lays a heavy hand on his shoulder. “My advice? You ain't gonna find Benjen Stark and if you did, you wouldn't like it.”

“Maybe,” Jon says slowly, “I'm trying to find the thing that killed him.”

“Well in that case, I'd say you're the biggest idiot I've ever met,” Tormund lets out a laugh and Jon finds himself laughing along.

He spends the rest of the night drinking and laughing with Tormund and he's able to forget for a moment that he's come here to die.

* * *

When he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

He dreams of Ned sitting him down. _The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives_ , Ned says, over and over. In his dream, there's a figure behind Ned that he knows wasn't there at the time. A man a few years older than Jon is now, with a long solemn face.

_The pack survives._

* * *

He wakes in a cold sweat with a hangover from hell.

Whatever had been in that drink wasn't _normal_. If he gets the chance, he'll have to ask Tormund what it was.

He spends the day asking around town for rumors and he doesn't care about everyone knowing his business. The residents here seems to know that there's a darkness lurking in the wilderness outside the town walls. The town has _walls_ for fuck's sake. They're meant to keep something out and everyone here knows it. They don't seem fazed by his questions and as the day progresses, he becomes more direct and by the end of the day, he's straight up asking where he can find the Other.

They point him north, of course. One of them gives him coordinates of a rock where Benjen Stark had been seen.

Finally, an old shopkeeper gives him the best advice he gets all day. “You go out there,” she says, “it'll find _you.”_

* * *

He prepares the best he can.

Layers, but not too many. He needs to survive the cold but still be able to move. He straps _langklo_ to his hip and eventually decides he's as prepared as he's ever going to get.

People watch him as he sets out north. They don't try to stop him and he's made enough fuss in the town that they all seem to know what he's doing. He supposes he should've been quieter; hunters don't normally go around telling everyone their business. But Jon doesn't care and he figures if he dies out there, at least a few of the townspeople might remember his name. Maybe someday word will get back to the others about him, like Benjen's name came to him.

_Sometimes I feel like you aren't going to show up again and I won't ever know if you just stopped coming around or if you're dead._

He tries to shake her voice out of his head as he sets out into the deep snows.

* * *

It's slow going and he thinks that no matter how many layers he could have put on, he'd never fight off the cold. It seeps through the fabric and settles deep in his bones. It's unnatural, he thinks, as the wind whips around him, picking up snow. He's surprised it doesn't cut him open, sharp as it is.

What could be hours or days or minutes later, he sees a figure in the distance, a dark shape against the white of the snow and the sky. Now or never, he thinks, changing his course towards the figure and when it comes into view, he recognizes it from his dream and he knows it's Benjen Stark.

Unlike his dream, this Benjen has ice blue eyes instead of the dark gray of the Starks and Jon knows he's _wrong_. Benjen walks towards him and when he's close enough, he reaches out and grabs Jon's coat and swings him to the ground with an inhuman force. On his back, Jon looks up at Benjen standing over him and as Benjen bends down, Jon notices what looks to be a shard of glass shoved into Benjen's heart.

Not glass, ice.

Benjen's hand comes to settle around Jon's throat and it tightens and Jon tries to push him off. One of Benjen's ragged fingernails bites into the side of his neck and Jon can almost _hear_ his blood hiss as it hits the freezing cold air. He's still struggling against the hand at his throat when Benjen freezes, pulls his hand back, and stares at the blood on his fingers.

Something, an intelligence, seems to flicker behind Benjen's eyes and he rears back and Jon struggles to stand up. Benjen is still staring at the blood and something that sounds like Ned's voice whispers in his head - _pack_.

“Benjen,” he says, cautiously, his voice hoarse from the cold, barely audible over the wind whipping around them. “Where is it?”

Benjen looks at him and his eyes are still blue but there's an anguish in them now and before Jon can say anything else, Benjen turns and stumbles off.

He doesn't know what else to do, so he follows.

Benjen is fast, seemingly unfazed by the cold or the snow and Jon struggles to keep up, the cold making it feel like every time he breathes, he's breathing in shards of glass that tear up his lungs.

Somehow, it gets colder.

And then finally.

_Finally._

It's waiting for him.

He knows it's waiting.

It knows him.

Standing in the middle of a raging storm it looks both human and not, like it's made of ice but when it moves, it moves like water, like wind, like nothing Jon's ever seen before. It comes to him and draws a sword out of a sheath and Jon then notices it's armor, scaled and ancient.

It swings and Jon ducks out of the way but his movements are slow. The sword misses and he gets the feeling it wasn't trying very hard. He rolls and unsheathes _langklo_ and the Other's eyes go to it and even though it's face never changes, Jon can feel it's hatred.

This was a mistake, he thinks. The cold bites through every layer of clothing and deep into his bones. It feels like his blood is freezing in his veins and he wonders why he ever thought he had a chance. He doesn't have a chance, he realizes, as the Other brings it's sword down and Jon clumsily dodges out of the way. His limbs feel numb and the only way he knows he's still holding _langklo_ is because he can see it clutched in his fist.

Again, the Other brings it's sword down and this time Jon blocks it with his knife and there's a strange rending sound and the sword shatters and Jon feels a brief moment of triumph.

The Other's face still doesn't change but Jon can sense a smile and it pulls out it's own knife, long and sharp and wicked and this time when it swings, it doesn't miss.

The blow knocks him to his knees and he supposes the cold is good for something; he barely feels the gash on his arm, he only notices his blood steaming in the cold air. He can barely feel anything, he wonders if he's even still breathing. The cold feels like it's a part of him now, and he can't get up from where he's kneeling.

Even if it weren't for the cold, Jon isn't sure he'd stand a chance. The Other moves like liquid, like lightning. He wants to laugh at his own stupidity, for thinking he could do this where Benjen failed, where others failed. He wonders how many Starks had tried to come after it, how many had died alone and forgotten in the frozen wastelands of the far north. He'll just be another in a long list (except he's _not_ a Stark and he wonders again at his audacity). He'd talked of dying, sure, but he thought, he assumed, he _dared_ to think he'd take the Other out first. It seems so clear now that he won't.

The Other places a hand on his shoulder and brings the knife to his stomach and slowly slides it in and he's so numb all he can feel is a distant, sharp pain. His blood hisses when it hits the air and the Other slides the knife out and then into his side. Again and again, he watches the Other cut into him and his limbs are too numb, they won't even move. He looks down in wonder that he's still clutching onto _langklo._

The Other puts the knife away and Jon sways on his knees, his blood freezing almost before it hits the snow below him. The Other seems to summon a shard of ice out of nowhere and places the tip of it against Jon's heart and he knows it's going to make him like Benjen. Undead. His mind rebels against the thought and his burned hand twitches around _langklo,_ but he still can't seem to summon the strength to move his arm.

Suddenly, a dark shape comes out of nowhere and flings itself onto the Other and Benjen is there, grappling with the Other for the ice shard in it's hand and Jon feels a sudden relief and a voice in his mind sighs - _pack_.

There's a strange sort of comfort, he thinks, that even as far removed as he is, Benjen recognized the Stark blood in him. He and Benjen have never met, but they're still kin, somewhere deep and primal. Or maybe, he thinks, the Starks had wormed their way so deep under his skin that they got into his veins and that's what Benjen can sense.

The Starks.

Something throbs in his chest and he closes his eyes and in the darkness he pictures them and the first image that comes to his mind is the family portrait that Cat had dragged them to. Ned standing stoic with his arm around a softly smiling Cat. He and Robb with twin grimaces, itching to get out of their ties. Arya with a scowl, Bran looking bored, Rickon on the verge of a tantrum, and in the middle of it all, Sansa with a brilliant smile.

The throbbing in his chest grows, he feels a strange warmth radiate through him and he thinks maybe it's hypothermia. He opens his eyes to see Benjen laying on the ground, the ice shard no longer through his heart, his eyes open and dull gray and lifeless. All he can think is how much Benjen laying there looks like Ned. He thinks of finding Ned and Cat's bodies, of running to the stairs and finding Robb, baseball bat still in hand. He thinks of finding the others in a closet, of the fear in their eyes and he hears Ned's voice again, a calm, solemn thing in his ear - _survive._

The Other is turning back towards him and Jon feels his arm move and with a sudden, messy swing he brings _langklo_ up and slides it through a gap in the Other's armor. There's a moment of silence and then a sharp clang like a bell, like an iceberg cracking in two, pierces the air so loud he thinks his ears might bleed.

The Other _shatters_ and it knocks him back and he lays in the snow and stares up at the sky and he allows himself to shut his eyes.

And then he dies.


	11. where do you go, cause you're never here

He's wrenched from death by fire.

Life comes screaming back into his body and he sits up and takes a deep, gasping breath, his nerve endings aflame, ears ringing, eyes unable to adjust to the light.

Things come to him slowly; a hard, rough surface under him, heat from a fire, muffled voices, shadows flickering on the wall, the taste of iron. His lungs are sore and strained and his heart thrums wildly in his chest and his eyes slowly come into focus.

The first thing he sees is the woman, Melisandre, staring at him with wide eyes and a look of triumph. There are others behind her, Tormund is there, the bartender, a few of the men he'd talked to from the logging camp, he can't remember their names. They're watching him with a mix of awe and horror and as the ringing in his ears dims, he can hear them talking.

“... _right? You sure he ain't...”_

“ _...how can you tell?...”_

“ _...the other one didn't come back...”_

His other senses are dulling from the initial overload. He's on a wooden table. There's a fireplace in the center of the room. _The bar._ He looks down.

“I'm naked.”

His voice is barely that, a hoarse whisper, throat raw and he ends up coughing so hard he thinks he'll choke on his lungs.

“Don't think a zombie'd be concerned about nudity,” Tormund says to the other men and it's then that he notices they're holding guns, aimed at him.

“What did you see?” Melisandre breathes, grabbing his face in her hands and turning him to look at her. When he doesn't answer, her eyes grow wild. “In death, _what did you see?_ ” Her hands are covered in blood but she doesn't seem to notice.

There was something, but it slips like sand from his mind and so he says “nothing” and watches her face fall and her hands drop down to her sides and she steps away from him.

Tormund comes forward, lowering his gun, and hands Jon a blanket. His limbs feel heavy and useless and he struggles to simply get the blanket wrapped around his waist. He doesn't much care about being naked, to be honest, but he understands that the conversation he's about to have will probably be easier on everyone if he's not.

When he's finally done, he wants to lay down, exhausted from the simple task, but he doesn't. He looks over at another table, at the chalked out runes on it's surface, a bowl of blood and animal parts, another bowl of ash. Magic, witchcraft. He wants to ask how she did it, but he's also afraid to. He's never heard of someone bringing true life back, not without some deal with a demon and he's afraid of what they'll tell him.

He turns away from the spell, the idea of it churning something in his stomach. On another table is a large sheet and he recognizes the shape of a body under it.

“Seems like you found Benjen Stark,” Tormund says, gesturing at the body. “We found him when we found you.”

Jon's mind is spinning and he tries to remember what happened but the only things he remembers are the cold and the snow and then death. “How?” he chokes out, his throat still raw.

Tormund looks at the other men and takes a deep breath. “Minute you left town, a storm started up. Worst one in a while. Raged for hours and then there was a noise-”

“Like a lightning strike,” one of the others chimes in.

“-and then the storm stopped. We waited all night for you to come back and when you didn't, we sent a search party out. Found you half buried in snow, nearly frozen solid. Same with him,” he again gestures at the body under the sheet. “Brought you back here and that's when she...”

He doesn't seem to understand what Melisandre did and Jon can't blame him. Magic is messy and personal and Jon's been around it for years and still doesn't know how it works.

There's silence for a few minutes before Jon asks what he can tell they're all thinking. “Am I alive?”

“Yes,” Melisandre's voice is low and she almost seems disappointed.

“How? Who made a deal?”

She looks at him and smiles. “I did.” He stares at her in horror and his words stick in his throat. She sees this and a laugh escapes her, deep and tinged with exhaustion. “Not for you, Jon Snow,” she lifts her hand up and traces her fingers along his jaw and he wants to pull back from her but his muscles barely work. “Years ago, I made a deal with a demon for the power to bring the dead back to life.” Her hand drops from his face and she seems older now - years, _decades_ older, for just a brief moment. “I was a young witch, full of hubris. I wanted power over the dead, _true_ power, not just raising a moving corpse. I paid my price and some day, the demon will come to collect it.”

Jon wants nothing to do with a demon deal, but it's too late now. He looks over at Benjen's body and out of the corner of his eye, he sees her shake her head.

“He's been dead for too long,” she says. “His body is too decayed.”

The other men in the room watch this conversation with fascinated horror and Jon almost wants to laugh, if that wouldn't take too much energy. He wants to sleep for years (he wants to die, he thinks for a brief moment).

“You truly saw nothing?” she asks and he sees the sadness in her and he wonders how many people she's brought back, how many she's asked the same question to and never gotten the answer she's looking for.

“Not nothing,” he tries. “But I can't remember.”

She nods and goes to sit by the fire and Tormund gives him a look and shrugs. The men have all put their guns down and are staring at him like they're waiting for him to do something.

“Do you have a phone?”

* * *

He's stuck.

The storm had gone on for hours and dumped feet of snow over the region, taking out power and phone lines up to the isolated villages in the northern reaches of Canada. The town has generators for this, but there's nothing they can do about the phone lines and when he asks about cell service, they laugh in his face.

A large basin of water is heated and he's left alone in a back room to bathe. He doesn't tell them he can barely move; he wants to be alone and if that means he drowns, then so be it. He manages to shuffle over to the basin and slowly, _slowly,_ get his legs into the water, one at a time, and then he sinks down and nearly groans at the warmth. He feels it on his skin but it doesn't seem to penetrate deeper than that; he still feels a cold ache in his bones and he wonders if it's from the hours outside or death and if it will ever go away.

He washes slowly and tries not to look down at the scars marring his chest. He'd seen them with the others around and he doesn't care to look at them again. Five ugly stab wounds across his stomach, side, chest – proof of his recklessness. Proof of his death. They're all healed over with thick raised scars except for one, a tiny scratch over his heart. It's barely anything and when he'd seen it, he'd remembered the tip of the ice shard pressed over his heart. He can still feel it, colder than the air around him, colder than his own body nearly frozen solid. Benjen had saved him from something worse than death. It itches, this small open wound. Melisandre had frowned and said it hadn't healed with the others and he wonders if it will ever heal.

Maybe it never will. Maybe he'll always be cold.

* * *

Death has taken something from him.

He barely tastes food, he drifts in and out of sleep and doesn't dream. His muscles are weak, movements slow, speech labored. He's always cold.

Most of the people in the town give him a wide berth except for Tormund. Melisandre has all but disappeared and Jon thinks perhaps his resurrection has taken something from her, too.

They cremate Benjen. There's no way to get his body back to Vermont, especially not in it's current state of decay and not without the border authorities asking a lot of questions, but Jon can't abide the thought of leaving him here. Benjen doesn't belong here, he belongs in Winterfell.

Nearly a week later, Tormund pushes a cup of that terrible alcohol in front of him and wishes him a Merry Christmas and that startles him. He'd left Vermont around mid November. It had taken him a while to reach King William Island, a few days of research, and then however long it took them to find him and bring him back. A month, he thinks. He's been gone over a month and he wonders if everyone thinks he's dead. It's a dull thought, detached from any real emotion.

It's another eight days before the roads have cleared enough for travel and another six before he can get a ride on a supply boat back to the mainland.

* * *

It's not until he gets to Manitoba that he finds a working phone.

The motel room is cheap and smells like old cigarettes, but he doesn't really care (he finds he doesn't care much about anything). He sits on the edge of the bed and picks up the room phone and dials the number he memorized years ago.

“Hello?” Sam sounds frazzled as he answers and for a moment Jon can't speak, mind gone blank. “Hello?” Sam asks again and in the background Jon hears the sharp cry of a baby. Gilly had been close to due when he'd left, he'd missed the birth entirely. It's a strange sensation, knowing that life had gone on without him.

“Hey Sam,” he finally gets out and he hears Sam hiss out a breath.

“ _Jon_?” Sam cries and in the background, he hears a shrill _what_ from Gilly. Then there's movement on the other end, voices, he thinks he hears Satin's too, and it sounds like they're all fighting for the phone and it's too much noise but he resists the urge to hang up the phone.

* * *

There's a hunter bar in Ontario and he stops in, if only to consume enough alcohol that he sleeps instead of the restless tossing and turning he gets most nights. When he walks into the bar, he sees Mormont sitting at one of the booths and their eyes meet and Mormont raises an eyebrow at him.

Jon walks over, winding his way through tables, and stops when he gets to Mormont's. Mormont gives him an appraising look and there's a few moments of silence before he says “you look like shit.”

Jon huffs out a laugh and slides into the booth. “Thanks.”

“You've lost weight. I'd offer to buy you some food, but seein' as how the last time I saw you, you stabbed me...”

“You're fine,” Jon tells him and he sees the corner of Mormont's mouth twitch.

There's silence for a bit before Mormont sighs and Jon watches his stoic expression soften. It makes him look older and Jon remembers that Mormont is nearing sixty, with over twenty years of that hunting. Most hunters don't retire, most of them don't make it to sixty. Most of them die young, Jon had resigned himself to the idea long ago.

He doesn't say it, though. They don't talk about their feelings and Jon thinks that the closest he ever got to telling Mormont how he felt is when he stabbed him.

Mormont sighs again and says “alright kid, lets get some food in you, you look like you'd tip over in the wind.”

* * *

The rest of the drive through Canada is much easier with Mormont driving. When it was just him, Jon had to take frequent breaks, driving for only and hour or so at a time before having to pull over to rest. He knows he should be worried, that _driving_ exhausts him, but any worry he may have is dull and easy to overlook. All of his emotions are dull, he thinks. They exist, he can sense and identify what he's feeling, but it's like he's feeling them through a layer of thick gauze.

He doesn't tell Mormont this. He doesn't tell Mormont that he's still cold. He can feel the heater blasting warm air at him in the car, he can feel it on his skin, but it only ever stays on the surface. Inside, his bones are still frozen, his blood churns slowly through his veins, his heart beats so slowly that sometimes he has to press a hand to his chest to make sure it's still going, and he wonders again if he's really alive.

* * *

When they cross the border he feels a strange fluttering in his stomach and it's the strongest feeling he's had since coming back. Winterfell is close, he feels like he can _sense_ it, and when it finally comes into view, it feels unreal.

He hadn't planned on coming back, not really. He'd said his goodbyes when he went north. No matter how far he runs, though, Winterfell pulls him back.

Before Mormont even shuts off the engine, the front door is opening and a small dark figure bursts out and flies down the stairs. Jon tries not to struggle out of the passenger side, even though his limbs still feel weak and useless, and he turns just in time for Arya to skid to a halt in front of them, gravel flying under her feet.

Her eyes are huge and they watch him as he walks slowly around the car and he tilts his mouth into a smile and says “hey.”

With a feral noise, she launches herself at him and slams into his chest and knocks him back against the car, her arms tight around his middle and when she says “ _you fucking idiot_ ” he can hear that she's crying.

He's overwhelmed, to say the least, but then he always is with the Starks. He feels happy seeing her, but it's still buried under a hazy layer of numbness.

Their breath clouds the air and it makes him realize how cold it is. He barely noticed, but Arya's not wearing a proper coat and so he pushes her away and tells her to go inside. In the living room, Sam and Gilly and Satin are waiting. The baby is there in Gilly's arms and Gilly starts to cry when she sees him and he gives her a hug because he knows he should.

He sits on the couch because his legs feel weak and he's overwhelmed and all he wants to do is go upstairs and get into bed and try to sleep (though he never truly sleeps anymore). He wants to be alone, he wants the quiet. There's too many people and they're all staring at him like they're waiting for something but he doesn't know what they're waiting for and there's a million things scratching at the haze in his mind that he doesn't have the energy to identify.

“Where are the others?” he asks when he realizes the rest of the Starks aren't here.

“I decided to stay here after Christmas,” Arya explains. “The others had to go back to school. Why didn't you _call_ us?”

He can hear the betrayal in her voice and he's not sure how to explain to her that he hadn't wanted to. He's not the same, he _knows_ he's not the same and he was putting this off – the inevitable realization on their end that he's come back _wrong_. At first he'd hoped that he just needed time, but as the weeks have dragged by, it's only getting worse.

“I called Sam,” is all he can think to say and he knows its the wrong thing the moment he says it from the way her face twists into a frown. She doesn't say anything else and she leaves the room and he can feel the disapproving looks from Sam and Gilly and Satin.

* * *

The next morning he wakes early after not-quite-sleeping and he thinks that if he grabs a cup of coffee and sits outside like he used to, maybe that will jolt him back into reality.

It doesn't. Watching the sunrise, he knows _what_ he's supposed to be feeling and if he tries very hard, he can sense it there, but he doesn't _actually_ feel it. It's like hearing a party next door, hearing the thumping bass and the shouts of people having a good time, but you aren't there and so you kind of wish it would just stop.

He kind of wishes it all would stop. He either wants to feel things fully again or have them go away completely; this half awake state is exhausting.

“Jon!” a voice breaks him out of his thoughts and he turns to find Sansa at the back door and he can see Bran and Rickon behind her, all in their coats and looking tired and he thinks they must have driven all night to get here from Boston.

(In his chest, he feels his heart struggling to beat, he feels a dim desire to reach out and touch her but it slips away as quickly as it arrived.)

She steps out of the back door and looks at him and there's an emotion he can't place in her expression. When he looks at the others, they look horrified and he wonders if Mormont or Sam or Arya told them about his death.

“You'll _freeze,”_ she nearly cries and he realizes then that he's been sitting out in the snow covered garden with no real coat or shoes on, just his sweatpants and a t-shirt. He hadn't noticed the cold.

“Oh,” is all he can think to say and just like with Arya, he realizes too late that it's the wrong thing.

When he comes back inside, Sansa throws her arms around him and he can hear her speaking muffled words into his shoulder and her arms are tight around his neck and her body feels hot pressed against his and all he can think is that it's so _much_. The scratch over his heart itches suddenly and terribly and Rickon and Bran are also talking and Arya has woken up and come down and they're all _talking_ and Sansa won't let go of him.

He squeezes his eyes shut to try and block out at least some of the sensations but that just makes the feel of Sansa against him sharper, the words she's whispering ( _stupid, don't ever do that again, I missed you_ ) louder in his ear.

His hands come to her waist and he pushes her away before his brain really processes that it's the wrong thing to do. They all stop talking and stare at him and Sansa stumbles back out of his reach and whispers “ _sorry_.” She won't look at him now and he knows he did something wrong but his mind moves slow and he can't quite figure out the intricacies of _what_ he did wrong or how to fix it.

“I have Benjen's ashes,” is what comes out of his mouth and they all stare at him like they don't understand his words. “He's in the living room on the mantel.”

“Thank you,” Bran finally says, eyes moving between Sansa and Jon.

“Are you ok?” Rickon asks and if Jon had to guess at the emotion, he'd pick confusion.

“I died,” he shrugs and Sansa takes a sharp breath and a step back and still won't look at him.

“Yeah, Arya told us,” Bran moves slowly to the side, half in front of Sansa like he's shielding her from Jon and Jon wonders at this. There's too many people here, he thinks, he's having a hard time trying to figure out what they're feeling so that he can say the things he's supposed to say (although as the days pass, he's having a harder and harder time knowing what he's _supposed_ to say and he finds himself saying the wrong thing more often than not).

“She also told us you were...” Rickon starts, but Arya elbows him and he stops talking. Jon's not sure what that's about.

“Different,” Arya says finally.

They all watch him, even Sansa raises her eyes finally and looks at him and he _knows_ he's supposed to say something here. What that is, he can't figure out. Something reassuring, but the words won't come to him. His tongue feels thick in his mouth and he's tired; it's only been an hour since he woke up but he already wants to go back to sleep and he wonders again if he's really alive or maybe this is just an illusion of life and the spell is wearing off already.

When he doesn't say anything at all, Sansa turns and leaves the room and Bran follows her. Arya gives him a look that he knows isn't _good_ and also leaves, dragging Rickon out, too.

* * *

That night he's laying in bed, unable to grab even the smallest bit of sleep. He isn't comfortable, but his limbs feel heavy and useless and he can't be bothered to try and turn into a better position. There's a slight noise and he looks over to see his door creaking open and Sansa slips inside, shutting it quietly behind her.

She walks over to him and he thinks she looks like a ghost, pale and slight in the moonlight and shadows. He doesn't bother to sit up as she climbs onto his bed and swings a leg over his hips and leans down and presses her face into his neck and whispers his name and somewhere distant inside himself, he feels something clawing to get his attention.

“Please,” she whispers and brings her head up to look at him, eyes wide and shining and he realizes she's crying, though he doesn't know why. “Jon, please come back.”

This confuses him and he says “I'm right here.”

She shakes her head and leans down and kisses him, a hard press of her lips to his. He used to know how to respond to this, but it's gone now, a shadow in his memory. He lays still until she pulls away and lets out a low noise and more tears slip down her face. “Please _talk to me_ ,” she brings her hands up to either side of his face and looks him in the eyes and her hands feel too hot, but the heat only stays on his skin; underneath his bones are frozen.

He isn't sure what she wants him to say and so he says nothing at all and her eyes are too intense so he fixes his own on the ceiling above, blank and white and nothing.

After what feels like an eternity, he hears her let out a sob and she scrambles off of him and leaves the room and for a brief moment he feels his heart _beat_ but then it slows again to nearly nothing and he spends the rest of the night staring at the ceiling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> whoops I upped the chapter count


	12. to be lost in a forest, to be cut adrift

He's become a ghost that haunts Winterfell.

He doesn't notice it right away (he doesn't notice much of anything these days), but eventually he sees how they watch him, how they stop talking when he enters a room, how they tiptoe around him.

His indifference has started to morph into a sort of bitterness at their very presence, at his own life.

* * *

He's brought into the living room for some sort of intervention and he despises them for it. There's a roaring fire in the fireplace and he hates that, too.

“So you don't have any contact information for this Melisandre woman?” Sam asks with a frown and Jon shakes his head.

“What do you remember about the spell?” Satin cuts in.

“It was magic shit,” he says and he watches Sansa recoil at the tone in his voice. He can't help it, he wants them to go away, he wants to be alone, away from the fire, away from _life_.

“ _Nothing?_ ” Satin asks in what sounds like irritation and Jon has a brief moment where he thinks of killing him. Of standing up and snapping Satin's neck.

His heart _beats_ for a moment and it's enough for something to rage up inside him against the idea.

The rest of them are talking now as he sits on the couch and glares at the fire and he doesn't pay attention to them because it doesn't matter, until Rickon pipes up and says “why do you keep scratching yourself?”

They all stop and look at him and Jon doesn't know what Rickon means until he realizes that he's scratching at his chest, at the open wound that still hasn't healed.

Arya frowns and moves forward and shoves his hand away and pulls down the collar of his t-shirt and they all look at the cut over his heart.

“What's that?” Arya leans forward with a furrowed brow.

“Cut,” he says, swatting at Arya's hand and pulling his t-shirt back into place.

“That's not just a _cut_ ,” Bran says.

“Is that from the Other?” Sam's voice raises an octave. “It _still_ hasn't healed?”

“Obviously not,” Jon nearly growls, an irritation rising in his chest and his hand comes back up to scratch at the open wound. There's silence for a little and he can sense them whispering to each other but he doesn't bother to listen.

Before he realizes what's happening, Mormont is pulling him off the couch and dragging him to Ned's old study. Satin clears the desk off as Mormont pushes him to sit and Sam turns on the reading lamp and aims it towards him. The Starks trail after them and stand near the doorway. Gilly comes in with a handful of items and lays them down on the table next to Jon.

Mormont tugs his t-shirt off and Jon fights him the whole way; he doesn't want anyone touching him but they seem intent on it. Mormont then stands behind him and holds him still as Sam leans forward with a magnifying glass and starts looking at the wound. He pokes and prods at it and eventually tells Gilly to go grab the med kit, which she does.

When she comes back, Sam pulls a pair of tweezers out of the bag and says “this is gonna hurt, I'm sorry.”

When the tweezers dig into the cut, Jon loses control of his body. He feels himself lunge out of Mormont's grip and shove Sam away and he scrambles off the desk and runs for the door, but Bran and Rickon catch him. They're untrained and Jon can easily overpower them, but then Arya also gets a grip on him and even Sansa gets in his way and they drag him back to the desk where Satin and Gilly are helping Sam off the floor.

“Hold him still,” Sam says with a steeliness in his voice that Jon's never heard.

Mormont grabs his shoulders again and forces him flat on his back on the desk and he _struggles_ against it, some primal thing in him _screams_ to break free.

Mormont and Satin grab either arm and then there's a weight on his legs and when he looks down, Bran and Rickon have a hold on either one and then Arya is climbing onto the desk and kneeling on his legs to keep them still and Gilly is handing Sam back his magnifying glass and tweezers and Sansa comes up and holds his head still.

Sam starts to prod at the wound again and Jon's mind goes blank.

He's distantly aware of shouting, of his limbs flailing against the weight on them, filled with an energy and strength he hasn't had since he died. He's aware of Sansa's voice murmuring in his ear, soft kisses pressed to his temple. He's aware of an animal noise, a sort of feral scream that fills the room. Pain spears through his chest, lancing out from his heart, through his veins, until it feels like he's burning from the inside out.

And then it's over. His limbs go limp and he takes deep, gasping breaths and when he opens his eyes, he sees Sam and Satin staring at something in Sam's hand – a pair of tweezers gripping what looks to be a tiny piece of glass and disgust twists Jon's stomach because he knows it's a shard of ice.

Mormont and Bran and Rickon have loosened their hold on him and Arya clambers off the desk and they help him sit up. Sansa comes to his side and turns his face to her and stares at him. Whatever she's looking for, she seems to find it, because she's suddenly kissing him, small quick things to his mouth and cheeks and nose and forehead and he can't keep up.

“What the fuck do we do with it,” he hears Satin say and he turns to look at them again. The ice shard is still held in the tweezers and it's smoking like dry ice in the air.

Gilly moves forward with the rest of the med kid and starts to clean the wound on his chest and bandage it. It doesn't itch anymore, but it does feel raw and painful and he winces when she cleans it out.

He realizes he's shivering; he's cold. Not the cold numbness but a deep chill and he _feels_ it.

“Let's get him to the fire,” he hears Sansa say and her hands wrap around his arm and tug gently and then Mormont is there, helping him off the desk and they walk him back to the living room and sit him in front of the fire and Sansa wraps a quilt around his shoulders and the heat from the fire is a relief. He hears them talk more, but he feels exhausted and closes his eyes.

Sansa sits next to him and rubs at his arms through the quilt and he opens his eyes and he feels a lazy smile tug at the corners of his mouth. She looks so concerned, mouth tilted into a frown, forehead scrunched in concentration, blue eyes sharp and piercing. He doesn't like the line in between her brows and so he lifts a hand out of the heap of quilt and reaches up and presses his forefinger to it. She jerks back, startled, and he feels almost giddy; dizzy and slow and with a warmth calming the tremors in his limbs. She stares at him for a second and all he can say is “you're pretty” and his words come out slurred and slow. Her mouth parts and then she lets out a strange laugh that he thinks sounds more like a sob than an actual laugh.

“Is he _drunk_ ,” he hears Arya grumble from the other side and he twists his head to face her.

“Hey, Underfoot,” he reaches his hand out and pats her on the head and she smacks it away.

“Don't call me that,” she whispers and her voice sounds like it's on the edge of tears.

He feels sleep pull at him and the shivering has quieted so that he's no longer violently shaking. There's more talking and then someone pulls him up to stand again and he's marched upstairs to the master bedroom. He's unsure why they're bringing him here, to Ned and Cat's old room, but then Bran and Arya begin to light a fire in the fireplace as Mormont deposits him on the bed. Sansa rolls him onto his back and starts to pull off his jeans, tugging them down his legs and he mutters “if you wanted me naked you just had to ask” and Sansa lets out another half sob, half laugh.

Mormont has left and Rickon comes in with a pair of sweatpants and a thermal shirt and Sansa dresses him as Arya and Bran get the fire going.

“God, you're heavy,” Sansa laugh-cries, trying to haul his legs fully onto the bed and he lets his own laugh out but doesn't try to help her. His limbs feel limp and useless but no longer numb. He rolls into the middle of the bed and Sansa pulls the covers up over him.

She's about to retreat but he uses what little strength he has left to grab onto her arm and he tries to pull her down with him. There's not much force behind the motion, but she allows herself to lay next to him and she curls into him and there's a movement on the other side of him and Arya climbs up and lays down and then Bran is climbing on next to Arya and Rickon drapes himself across their feet like a dog.

For the first time in what feels like years, he's warm and sleep drags him under and when he dreams, he dreams of Winterfell.

* * *

He slips in and out of sleep.

The first time he wakes its with the Starks still around him and the fire crackling in the hearth and he simply sighs and shifts his arm and pulls Sansa tighter to him and falls back asleep.

The second time he wakes he doesn't even open his eyes, but he can hear Mormont and Sam and Satin talking. Someone is sitting on the bed and he can feel them changing the bandages on his chest. When that's done and his shirt is pulled back down and the covers back up, he hears Satin say, too low for the others to hear, _don't ever fucking scare me like that again_. Jon tries to nod, but he's not sure if he succeeds and he drifts back to sleep.

The third time he wakes, he can tell it's dark out, the fire is the only light in the room and when he looks down, he sees Sansa and Arya sitting cross legged at the end of the bed, facing each other.

“You have to finish,” Arya is saying and Sansa frowns and looks down at her hands. “I'll be here, Sam and Gilly and Satin will be here.”

“I can't leave,” Sansa whispers.

“You have two months left, and it wouldn't be good to change Rickon's school so close to the end of the year. You can come back on weekends like you've been doing already.”

“But he's _back_ now.”

Arya reaches over and grabs Sansa's hand and warmth spreads through his chest.

“He's not going away again,” Arya says. “I will break his stupid leg if he tries.”

Jon feels his mouth curl into a smile and the warmth filters through the rest of him and he falls back asleep.

The fourth time, he wakes to a quiet humming and he vaguely recognizes a lullaby. When he forces his eyes open, Gilly's sitting against the headboard next to him, gently rocking the baby and Jon is distantly aware that he never learned its name and he suddenly, desperately, needs to know. He turns to his side and Gilly looks down at him and gives him a smile and lifts the baby's hand up to wave at him. “Name,” he says, voice like gravel, and she tells him it's Samwell.

“We call him Little Sam,” she smiles gently and smooths the tuft of hair on Little Sam's head. “I hope you don't mind, his middle name is Jon.” He feels something bubble up in his chest and she sighs. “We weren't sure if you'd ever come back. Sam wanted Jon to be his first name, but I told him when you _did_ come back, you'd make a whole fuss about it.” A noise that Jon thinks is a laugh escapes his throat and Gilly's smile slips into something else. “I told them you'd come back. We knew you would.”

He brings a hand slowly up and Gilly shifts and tilts Little Sam down so that Jon can repeat her motion, the small bit of hair feels like almost nothing against his calloused fingers and Little Sam gently coos and yawns.

“I'm honored,” he says (and means it) but begins to cough at the dryness of his throat. Gilly gestures over his shoulder and he turns to find a glass of water sitting on the side table and while he struggles into a sitting position to drink it, Gilly slides off of the bed and tells him she'll let the others know he's awake.

* * *

There's a fuss but all he wants to do is shower. He's been asleep for nearly thirty six hours, they tell him, and he _feels_ like it. Sansa shoos them out of the room eventually.

“Do you need help?” she asks as he leans heavily against the door to the attached bathroom.

“You really want to see me naked,” he tries to joke and she rolls her eyes at him and moves forward to help him get his shirt and then his pants off. He feels disgusting and he'd actually rather her not be this close when he probably smells like death, but she doesn't seem to notice (or she's just very polite, which he thinks is probably the case). The truth of it is, he's actually not completely sure he can manage a shower on his own, so he doesn't fight when she sets it for him and stands him under the spray.

What he does refuse is her help in washing because even though he feels weak physically, he'd like to do _something_ himself. She stands off to the side and watches him and he's never really been self conscious about his body before but as he lathers soap over himself he can feel that he's lost weight, and he's suddenly reminded of the five ugly stab wounds across his torso. She must have seen them by now, they'd had his shirt off when they removed the ice shard from his chest, but that hadn't even crossed his mind at the time.

He wonders what she thinks of him now, barely able to stand by himself and with his ribs starting to show and five more scars to add to the pile. He can't bring himself to look at her.

When he's done, he gets out and she wraps him in a towel and throws a second over his hair and he leans against the sink while he dries off.

“Your hair's so long,” she teases as she rubs the towel over it and he laughs and reminds her that he hasn't had a proper haircut or a shave in nearly three months and when he turns to look at himself in the mirror, he looks wild. His beard is too long and so is his hair and it makes him feel like a different person. She must sense this, because she sits him down on the closed toilet and goes to work. She cuts his hair and when she tells him she's not sure how to trim a beard, he tells her to just shave it off completely.

After, she stands him up and makes him look in the mirror and he looks like himself, though he has dark bruising circles under his eyes and his cheeks are hollow and sunken. She did a terrible job shaving, it's patchy and weird, but he doesn't care, he'll fix it later. For now he's grateful that he looks somewhat human again, that he _feels_ human again.

When he's dressed, he has to sit on the bed to gather his strength and she sits next to him and they lay back and she turns to press her face into his shoulder and her hand comes up to rest over his heart.

“Sam and Satin managed to destroy it,” she says. “Satin had to do some sort of spell. I'm surprised you didn't wake up from the noise.”

“I can't believe it was in there,” he says and his own hand comes up and covers hers and presses onto the bandage. “It was barely a scratch.”

She frowns and turns over and rests her head on one hand, the other still on his heart and she looks like she's debating on telling him something and he gives her hand a squeeze.

“Sam says... he thinks it was moving.”

“Moving?”

She nods. “He said he remembered seeing the scratch when you first came back and that it's bigger now. It got bigger and he thinks it was moving... _burrowing_ to your heart.”

He frowns at the ceiling and wonders if it's true; wonders what would've happened if the ice had reached his heart. Would he have been like Benjen? Would he have been something else completely? He remembers right before they dug it out, the bitterness and hatred he'd begun to feel towards them (the brief moment where he'd wanted to kill Satin, the thought makes his stomach twist).

“It's ok now,” she says like she's trying to convince both of them. “You're ok now.”

He thinks he is. He feels weak and tired but it's not like before. Under his hand, under hers, he can feel his heart beating, steady and strong. He can feel the heat from the fireplace and from her body where it touches his and it doesn't make him want to pull away.

“I heard you and Arya talking,” he says and she furrows her brow. “About school. She's right, you should finish.” She nods and looks a little sad and he wonders when he started to be able to understand her thoughts with just a look because he smiles and says “I don't _want_ you to go, but you should.”

“This past month, I'd go back during the weeks and spend the whole time wondering if you were ok. Wondering if you'd disappear while I was gone. And then I'd get there Friday nights and you'd still be there but you weren't...”

“Me,” he finishes and she nods. “I'm not leaving.”

He means it, he realizes. No lies or half truths. No dodging the question.

Her eyes flit between his, looking for it, though. He's spent too many years running from her and she doesn't seem to trust his words. It's alright, he thinks, he'll prove it to her.

“Arya said she'd break my leg, for one,” he jokes and she grins. “Plus, I'm in no shape to go roving across the country.”

At that moment, his stomach gurgles and they both look down and start to laugh.

“Guess it's been a while since you've eaten,” her smile is the sun and she sits up. “I'll go get you something.”

“No,” he sits up too. “I want to come down, I'm sick of laying in bed.”

She helps him down the stairs and into the kitchen and when the rest of them hear, they all pile in and he eats at the kitchenette table with Sansa at his side and Sam and Gilly sitting opposite, Little Sam nestled in Sam's arms. Arya and Bran and Satin sit on the island bar stools and Mormont leans against the counter that Rickon hops up onto, kicking his legs furiously until Sansa tells him to stop so he doesn't damage the cabinets.

It's all so strangely domestic and never in his wildest dreams had he pictured this, but it feels _right_ somehow. Sansa's hand resting on his thigh under the table feels right. Their talking and joking and laughter feels right. He lets it wash over him as he eats, their noise and light and life and it feels _right_.

* * *

As Jon comes back to life, so does the world. Spring dawns slowly, snow melting and hints of green popping through.

Jon gets his strength back. He spends his days working on the house, repairing things long neglected, opening up rooms and uncovering their secrets. Arya helps him, she's officially unemployed and living full time at Winterfell now and they work in relative silence but it's never uncomfortable.

Sansa, Bran, and Rickon are at school during the week. Sansa and Rickon join them on the weekends, but more often than not Bran stays in Rhode Island and they think he's secretly dating someone. Jon sits and listens to the others try and figure out which of his new friends it is, Jojen or Meera.

* * *

There's one day about a month after he wakes up that he finds himself with Mormont, Sam, Gilly, and Satin. He decides to tell them that he's going to stay in Winterfell, but the words stick in his throat. He feels like a traitor, like he's giving up on them.

It turns out, he doesn't have to tell them.

“I was thinking,” Sam says when he seems to notice that Jon is struggling for words, “that Gilly and I might stay in Vermont.”

“It'll be better for Little Sam,” Gilly says, eyes going over to where her son is sleeping. “And Montana reminds me too much of...” she doesn't finish her sentence and Sam reaches over and takes her hand.

“Vermont's nice,” Satin agrees, leaning back in his chair. “I'm digging the whole vibe here.”

Jon feels his heart start to race as he looks between them all. “You'll stay?” he finally chokes out and Gilly gives him a brilliant smile.

“I'm not gonna be hunting anymore,” Sam says and looks over at Little Sam. “Figure it's time to find a good place to settle down.”

“Did you know there's a shocking lack of witches in Vermont?” Satin says. “All the people I could help here...”

Jon has to sit back in his chair; he didn't realize how much he'd been dreading them leaving and the idea that they'll stay makes him almost lightheaded with relief.

There's a moment of silence before Jon realizes Mormont hasn't spoken.

“Don't know if Vermont's for me,” Mormont says slowly and Jon feels something twist in his gut. He can't let Mormont go hunting alone, he's getting old, even if he won't admit it. “I think Montreal's more my style.”

It takes a second for it to register in Jon's mind and then the relief is back, heady and overwhelming.

“So,” Jon says, voice gravelly with the emotions caught in his throat. “We're officially retiring.”

* * *

He can't wait for Friday and so he takes one of the cars and drives the hours to Boston. He has a slip of paper with her address on it, some sort of off campus apartment. He gets there around seven and knocks on the door and a girl answers, giving him a once over with a raised eyebrow.

“Sansa here?” he asks and tries not to shift uncomfortably under her gaze.

The girl steps back into the apartment and shouts Sansa's name. “There's a boy here!” she calls.

Sansa comes out of one of the rooms down the hall in a pair of sweatpants and what looks suspiciously like one of his t-shirts and when she sees him her eyes go wide and fearful and he realizes he probably should've called first. With all that's happened and all she knows now, him showing up unannounced probably isn't the best look, but he hadn't been thinking straight.

He tries to give her a reassuring smile but he's not sure he succeeds, and she grabs his hand and drags him towards the room she had come out of (behind them, the roommate calls _“don't be too loud, I have a test tomorrow_ ”) and he watches Sansa flush red.

“Sorry about Randa. Is everything ok?” she keeps her voice low as she shuts the door behind them. Her bedroom is all soft pinks and grays and there's a laptop open on her bed with a textbook next to it. He interrupted her, he thinks, and now that he's here, he isn't sure why he _had_ to come.

“Yeah, I just... I wanted to tell you, we're done,” he turns to face her and she looks stricken and he realizes his mistake. “No, not... _fuck_ ,” he breathes (it seems death hadn't fixed his inability to say the things he actually wants to say). “Hunting. We're done hunting. Officially.”

She stands in silence for a moment before slowly stepping towards him. “Forever?” she asks, one hand coming up to cup his jaw.

“Forever.”

Her eyes close and she takes a deep breath and then her face breaks into a smile and she throws her arms around him. “Good,” she says into his ear. “I can't lose you again, you _idiot_.”

He lets out a breathless laugh and buries his face into her hair and it smells like jasmine and she feels like home and before he realizes it “I don't want to get lost again” slips out of his mouth. Her arms tighten around him and to his absolute horror, he feels a lump form in his throat and hot tears well in his eyes. He doesn't cry, he _never_ cries, hasn't since he found the bodies ten years ago. He didn't cry at the funeral, when he killed his first monster, when he broke his arm, when Ygritte shot him. He's not capable of it anymore. Except he is, it seems, because he feels them spill out onto his cheeks, into her hair. When the first sob wrenches from deep in his chest, she holds him tighter and lets him cry even though he doesn't know what he's crying for.

For the Starks, maybe. For his lost childhood. For hers. For Arya's strength and Bran's brilliance and Rickon's wild innocence. For Sam's dead family and Satin's horrible one and what Gilly endured and Mormont's lost son. For the people he couldn't save and the ones he had to kill.

Somewhere along the way they end up in her bed and she whispers things to him, tells him that everything will be ok and he believes her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look, I upped the chapter count again because I have no self control. I think I could've ended it here but honestly I wanna write a bunch of epilogue fluff and you can't stop me. Also, 13 chapters feels appropriate for this fic, right? That's my logic here.


	13. so here we are

When Sansa graduates, they all troop down to Boston to watch her and Jon thinks he's never been more proud than in that moment. Over the past few months, she's gotten custody of Rickon and Arya had worked on getting his transfer to a high school in Vermont settled and now that Sansa's done school, they'll all be moving back. Except Bran, who seems completely fine in Rhode Island.

As they're waiting for Sansa to come back to them after the ceremony, Jon sees Petyr Baelish in the audience and his vision goes white for a moment and he finds himself walking over.

“Don't do anything stupid,” Arya hisses but he doesn't pay attention to her.

When Petyr sees him, his eyes widen a bit. “I don't think you were invited,” Jon keeps his voice low and it nearly comes out a growl.

“I'm allowed to come see my niece...” Petyr starts but Jon has no patience for him. He reaches out and grabs hold of Petyr's suit collar and the words die in the man's mouth.

“If you _ever_ come near any of them again, I will kill you. I will snap your neck and they will never, _ever_ find your body. If you don't believe me, I can get very specific about how I'll do it.” His voice remains surprisingly level considering how angry he is.

“You dare threaten...” Petyr starts again but Jon's seen fear enough times to recognize it.

“I could have killed you a thousand times over and it's only because she's a better person than me that you're still alive. I never want to see your face again and if I _ever_ do, I will rip you limb from limb. Do you understand.”

It's not a question, but he waits for Petyr's nod anyway before releasing his collar.

When he gets back to the Starks, Sansa's there and she doesn't even scold him for making a scene.

* * *

They bury Benjen with the rest of the Starks.

The local minister doesn't question where they got the ashes of a long dead relative and they bury him in a plot next to his parents.

“I didn't even know him, I don't know why I'm crying,” Sansa sniffs as she wipes tears from her eyes. Jon thinks it doesn't matter, Benjen was still family.

They visit Ned and Cat and Robb next and they sit with the graves for a while until Rickon's stomach rumbles and it makes Arya laugh, which makes Bran laugh, and then they're all laughing for no real reason.

On the drive home from the cemetery, they're quiet and they stop off at Cassel's Diner and Rodrick once again places a box of cider donuts on their table and refuses payment for it.

* * *

Arya gets a job at a local auto body as a receptionist. She loves cars but she doesn't know how to fix them. Jon thinks she's secretly getting one of the mechanics to teach her, though, because he finds her working on the old Dodge Ram Mormont gave him.

“Does your boss know you're learning this?” Sansa scolds but there's no real emphasis behind it. She's peering into the engine where Arya is working as Jon helps her.

“No,” Arya grumbles, “and it'll stay that way if Gendry knows what's good for him.”

Over her head, Sansa shoots him a look with a raised eyebrow. “Gendry, huh?” she asks and Jon has to turn his head so Arya won't see his smile at the tone.

“Yes, Gendry,” Arya huffs. When she turns to look at Sansa's raised eyebrows, she scrunches up her nose and says “ew, no, he's an idiot.”

* * *

That night while Sansa brushes out her hair, he lays on the bed and stares at the ceiling.

“I guess I should get a job,” he muses, “instead of bumming off you guys for the rest of my life.”

He hears her sigh and she puts down her brush. “You aren't _bumming_ off of us. This is your house, too. And I think maybe you deserve some rest.”

“Yeah, but you pay the bills, I have no money. I'm retired at twenty four.” The idea is strange to him, of a normal job. He never really thought about what he'd do – when he was a kid he wanted to be a fireman or an astronaut or Wolverine, all the normal things a fourteen year old wants to be. Now he has no idea what he wants.

“You have money,” she says quietly and it snaps him out of his reverie. He looks over and she's biting at her lip and not meeting his eyes. “When you gave your inheritance to us, we all decided to put it back into an account in your name.”

“What?” he sits up and she finally turns to look at him and he recognizes the stubborn set to her mouth, the tilt of her head.

“It's _your_ inheritance. We told Mr. Varys to send it to an account in your name instead of ours. He thought it was very funny.”

“You didn't tell me.”

“No, because you'd make a whole thing out of it,” she frowns, but then her shoulders fall and she looks away from him again. “You were so determined to stay away from us, but we kept hoping...”

That he'd come back. That he'd come home.

He feels a lump form in his throat and tears well in his eyes and he lays back and stares at the ceiling and curses this newfound _emotion_. Ever since that first time, tears have come easier to him and he finds himself on the verge of it more often than he ever imagined he'd be.

* * *

Sansa sits them down one day and insists that they get their GEDs, insisting that if they want to get any sort of job, they'll need at least a high school diploma. Jon knows she's right, but the idea of having to do schoolwork at age twenty four brings back every terrible thought he's ever had about himself.

“Why can't Sam just forge us a diploma?” Satin grumbles as Sansa places a study book in front of him. Sansa doesn't answer, but the looks she gives him is more terrifying than the Other had been.

Sam passes the GED on his first try without really studying, of course. Gilly is excited to learn and reads as much as she can with Little Sam bundled to her chest.

Sansa tries to help Jon study, but it doesn't go well. He gets restless and frustrated with himself easily and they end up arguing (most of the time, Satin tries to slip out while they fight, which only upsets Sansa further).

Eventually Sam takes over teaching and tends to phrase questions in a way that Jon understands. He gives Jon breaks to go outside and do something physical to release tension and that helps, too. Sansa pouts but admits that she maybe isn't the best at teaching.

He eventually passes, though, and he stares at the piece of paper and for once in his life feels some small sort of validation that maybe he _isn't_ stupid. Maybe he _can_ be normal.

* * *

When Satin opens a magic shop in Montpelier, Jon isn't exactly surprised. The city is less than an hour from Winterfell, but Winterfell _feels_ remote and Jon could sense Satin's restlessness. And so Satin moves to the city and opens his shop and Sam and Gilly help him out and despite his initial insistence that there were a lack of witches in Vermont, he quickly finds a coven.

“They don't do big magic or anything,” Satin tells him one evening. “It's mostly dumb stuff, but I guess that's fine.”

Jon gets the sense that it's more than fine. Satin isn't quite the pacifist that Sam is, but he still has no real stomach for killing and fighting and Jon thinks, beneath his haughtiness, Satin actually _likes_ that this coven makes medicines and yes, even _stupid luck charms_ , as Satin had sniffed dismissively.

He's meeting people his own age in the city, too and Jon watches him come alive in a way he never had in Montana or on the road.

* * *

One day Mormont shows up and pulls Jon aside with a grim expression and tells him that Ygritte is dead. He'd heard it through a hunter who'd been passing through Montreal. It seems Ygritte had continued hunting on her own after they broke up.

Jon doesn't ask how it happened, he'd rather not know, and he feels a strange sadness. They hadn't parted on good terms and he never loved her, not really. But he remembers how angry she was; back then, it had matched his own anger and self loathing. He remembers how reckless she used to be, how uncaring for her own life. He remembers the way she'd dismiss her father's death and at the time he hadn't recognized how hurt she'd been by it, how she never quite dealt with it.

He mourns her. Her wildness and cunning, her boldness, the soft glimpses he'd see – the way she'd close her eyes and get lost in a song she truly loved, the way she'd throw her head back and laugh.

Sansa finds him in their room and he struggles to tell her. He'd mentioned Ygritte before, in passing, offhandedly. It feels strange talking about Ygritte to her, it feels like a betrayal to mourn her.

But Sansa listens. She holds his hands as he tells her everything; how reckless he used to be with Ygritte, how wild. Speeding in the dead of night down dirt roads and sparring with real weapons. The fights they'd had, the bitterness. The shotgun she'd mangled his leg with. Sansa had seen that wound and asked him about it and he'd told her he'd been shot, but not by who. When he tells her, she frowns and her hand comes down to rest over the spot. He has jeans on, but her hand finds it right away, like she's memorized his body, like she's mapped him completely.

* * *

Bran starts publishing a comic online and Jon is incredulous when he first reads it.

“It's you,” Sansa giggles, peering over his shoulder at the laptop on the kitchen counter.

It is him. Sure, Bran changed his name and the backstory a little, but it's _him_.

_I used to draw you, you know_.

He feels something tighten in his chest and he turns to Sansa and says “I'm not a hero.”

She rolls her eyes and moves off to start making dinner. “Of course you are,” she says like it's nothing. He wants to argue, but his words stick in his throat and he looks back at the comic, where Christopher Storm has a sword in his hand and is vowing to seek revenge for the death of his parents.

* * *

He starts working construction.

He has no real skills that he can put on a resume. He can't list his proficiency with weapons or that he's memorized Latin exorcism rites. He certainly can't list _I died and came back to life_ in the accomplishments section. He has no prior job experience at age twenty four.

Luckily, Mr. Seaworth is willing to give him a shot and Jon finds that he likes the work. He likes working with his hands and he doesn't mind being outdoors or getting dirty. Honestly, it's easier than hunting and he knows that at the end of the day, he can clock out and go home and his family will be waiting for him.

Mr. Seaworth (who insists that Jon call him Davos), seems to take to him and starts to train him on more specialized work. He's invited to dinner with Davos and Mrs. Seaworth and Sansa charms them completely.

After the dinner, as they're driving home, she tells him that she thinks Davos wants him to help run the company some day. Jon wants to argue against this, that there are others who have been there longer and deserve it more, but the words don't come out and he finds that he wants it to be true.

* * *

Sam and Gilly decide to get married.

It's less because they feel the need to and more because Gilly watches a royal wedding over in Europe and decides she also wants a fancy dress.

The whole thing is not very formal, but Gilly insists on a white gown and she has Sansa and Arya as her bridesmaids, much to Arya's dismay. Jon's actually surprised at how little Arya complains, though, and he thinks it's because she just _likes_ Gilly. Plus, it's hard to be annoyed when Gilly is so enthusiastic about everything.

Jon and Satin are groomsmen and they walk down the aisle in the little chapel in town with Bran, Rickon, and Mormont in attendance. A few of Gilly's sisters flew out to join as well, and the Cassels are there and some of Satin's coven. Gendry is there, _not_ as Arya's date, and so are Bran's college friends Jojen and Meera (they're _sure_ he's dating one of them, but none of them can figure out which).

As Jon stands at the front, he looks around at the strange assortment of people and wonders how he got to this point, how his life became _this._ When he looks over at Sansa in her blue dress with her eyes full of tears, he realizes that he's _happy_. With no other emotion weighing it down, with nothing telling him that he shouldn't be, he's _happy._

* * *

When he sleeps, he no longer dreams of Winterfell.

He doesn't need to, Winterfell isn't a dream any longer. He's here and it's real in a way he never thought it would be again. Winterfell, Vermont, the Starks, they're in his blood; they've _always_ been in his blood.

He'd tried to give them up, prepared to die young and bloody and alone. He'd never really thought about life or what he wanted out of it, what he _needed_ out of it. It turns out, he doesn't need much. His home, his family, Sansa.

They wake up early and watch the sun rise in silence before the rest of the house awakens and chaos descends. He loves their chaos, the life that radiates through the halls with their voices and laughter.

They go to work and it may not be exciting, it may be routine and sometimes boring, but it's _his_. He gets to clock out and come home and watch Sansa help Rickon with his homework. He gets to play soccer with Rickon and Arya in the backyard and sit with Bran during his visits, telling him stories as Bran furiously sketches. He gets to watch Little Sam grow and begin to walk. When Satin comes to visit and starts to bring a _friend,_ he gets to watch Satin fall in love.

There's a moment, one weekend, as Little Sam teeters around, that he thinks about children, of having them with Sansa and the thought doesn't scare him like he thought it would. He'd never considered it before, it had never been a part of the plan. The plan had always been to die young and take as many monsters out as he could on the way, but that's not his ending anymore. He doesn't know what his ending is, but he figures it's whatever he wants it to be.

At night when he goes to bed, Sansa curls to his side and when he dreams, he dreams of the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have loved writing this story and I feel a little blank now that it's over. I want to thank everyone who's read it, who's left kudos, who's commented. I don't have anything else to say, just thank you.


End file.
